The Bad Moon Rising
by kakistocracy
Summary: Five years after that fateful summer at Gravity Falls, the Pines twins are rocked by the sudden death of their mother. But that's just the beginning. It's time for Dipper Pines to pay for a deal he struck a long time ago; one way, or another. (See author's note for warnings; this has been cross-posted from AO3!)
1. gravity is failing

**A/N: If I could add two more genres, it would be angst and horror, just to let you know. This story is also on AO3 on its 7th chapter, but I just got the idea to cross-post it here, wow. I'm jerseydevious on both tumblr and AO3 if you have any questions!**

 **Before I start, I want to warn you that this thing starts out bloody and gets _bloodier_. I have no mercy. I am not a kind author, and these kids are going to struggle. In this prologue, there's trigger warnings for temporary character death and graphic depictions of violence - and, of course, Bill Cipher being Bill Cipher.**

It smells like blood and oak trees. Dipper shivers.

Gravity Falls is slaving through the thick of the dog days of summer; the heat is blazing and miserable. It feels something like evaporated blood, if evaporated blood was a thing, and if it is, Dipper doesn't want know and he doesn't want to think about that.

Because, right there, is an ocean of his sister's blood, soupy and congealing and gross. It's a sick, dark red, almost purple.

There's no wiping his memory of that. That image will stay with him through thick and thin and rain and shine, it will always be there, he's sure of it. He's enslaved to it. Her blood is thick on his hands, and he feels like the monster in the corner of the room that no one sees and no one notices and he feels like the worst of them all.

This all hypothetical, of course. These are fake little thoughts that he'll never think again, products of the heat and intensity and the crippling fear. In real time, his sister is bleeding out before him.

Ha. What a joke. She's already bled out. She's blue. She's been here for a while.

He should have gotten here sooner. He should've - he should've done so much more than what he did, he should have - he should've -

Dipper's on the ground, now, pride thrown out somewhere behind him, face-first in the blood soaked dirt. Sometimes, he hates being the logical one, like now, because he knows - logically - that there's nothing he can do. He's too late. He wasn't fast enough, wasn't good enough. He knows, logically, that it's all his fault.

He can't even tell himself that he'll do better next time, since there won't even be a next time. He's alone. She's - taking an extended vacation, forever.

For a blinding moment, all he wants to do is go with her. He's never been a hopeful person. But, today, for right now, he'll hope against all hope until there's nothing but hope left; that sounds nice, a life of nothing but grasping at straws. At least there's something to hold on to.

Nice isn't good enough. Only Mabel is. He needs more than hope. He needs - he needs -

"You flatter me," Bill said.

Dipper is filled with a sudden, inexplicable rage - but he quells it. He's got cards to play. He's got something Bill wants, or he wouldn't have showed up.

"Right on that count, P.T.," Bill said. Dipper doesn't let his surprise show, even if the demon knows it was there. It's better than being exposed, like a field without grass and trees and just the great big sky.

"A deal," Dipper said. He's pleasantly surprised when his voice comes out stronger than he thought possible.

Bill blinks at him - or, depending on the intent, winks at him. It's hard to tell. The demon twirls his cane. "Name your terms, Pine Tree. Gotta say, I like this change of heart!"

Dipper pushes himself out of the dirt. And, yeah, maybe that part hurt his pride just a little, but it could withstand the blow. "You heal Mabel's wound - the physical, fatal one, and you replace the blood she's lost with her blood type. Not all of it, just enough so that she's alive and can survive the loss. You take the blood she needs from me and no one else."

Bill cackled. "What a nice thought, Pine Tree, but I need a life to ruin here! I'm not a demon for kicks, y'know. Or, maybe I am, but that's a universal secret."

"Ruin mine," Dipper said. "Take whatever - whatever you want from me. But it's got to come from me. Blood or bones or possessions. My friends and family don't count."

Bill's singular eye gleamed. "Whatever I want? My, my, Pine Tree - that's a steal! I honestly can't let you walk away with a deal like that, and I'm me!"

Dipper swallowed against the look in Bill's eye. It was beyond predatory - it had crossed into psychopathic eighty miles back. "Yes, you can."

Bill batted his eyelashes. "You know me too well! What a partnership we've got - I'm winning left and right!"

"Heal any other wounds that might threaten Mabel's life," Dipper said.

He pauses, for a hair's breadth of a second; he can't outsmart Bill. He could sit here all day and spew out rules for a contract and Bill could still manipulate it to his gain - could, and would. If he can't outwit a silver tongue...

"She… she can't die until after I do," he finished, in a rush. Dipper gripped Bill's cold, black fingers. "Deal."

Then he'll just have to out-speak him.

Dipper, after a little reading, had discovered that demonic deals are sealed as soon as physical contact occurs between the negotiators; by jumpstarting the deal, he deprived Bill of the chance to analyze the points Dipper had added. It was as close to a hidden fee as one could get with a verbal contract.

Dipper's heart seizes. He can't take it back, and there's no telling what could happen; Bill could just kill him and then kill Mabel right afterward. Bill could - he could - there's no telling what he could do, and there's absolutely no way for Dipper to stop it.

"Deal," Bill said, his eye turning blue. "Wait - what?"

Dipper let go, reeling with the cold, icy - but blistering - sensation of the azure fire crawling up his arm. He held his right hand gingerly. "You heard me."

If Bill had a mouth, he would've gaped. "What a dog, Pine Tree! Guess I'm teaching you something after all. I protect your sister for as long as you live, I get whatever I want to take from you, whenever - it's still a bargain."

Dipper swallowed. Right. I should've specified that he could only take one thing from me, Dipper thought. One more thing I failed at. And I should've told him to take it immediately.

Dipper feels a weight settle on his shoulders, heavy and spiked with pure, banal fear, the kind that causes wolves to attack things larger than they are. It's horrible. He'll live with it until Bill collects, and, suddenly, Dipper gets it; this is what Bill wanted. He wants to drive Dipper crazy. It's the first thing he'll take.

Dipper shudders.

Bill's eye narrows, like he was smiling under his bow tie. He tips his hat. "Just a tip, Pine Tree - eyes to the sky! You never know when it might do something crazy, like change colors! And, of course, the sun could always explode. Gotta love those celestial intentions. Oh, and save the teeth for me."

The gray leaches out and flows into Bill's being, taking away the dull horror of the Dreamscape and replacing it with the brilliance of Oregon's forests. "To the end, Pine Tree."

 **A/N: What do you guys think? Questions, comments, concerns - leave 'em below or at .com! Remember, I'm always hella thirsty for encouragement. I feed off of tears. It's been proven. My tip to you - remember every single detail you see, because it _will_ come back up later. (BTW, the real chapters are usually upwards of 10 pages, so expect MASSIVE updates compared to this.)**


	2. VKH LV QRW ZKDW VKH VHHPV

Her name is Marcella Pines. She has two children, and they're the sweetest kids she's ever met in her entire life. She has a husband, Mark, who leaves the house every Sunday night to geek out over football.

It's a simple, cold November, and there's rain quietly pouring down - simple. It's all very normal, very sweet, down to the red blanket and the book in her hand.

She wants to claw her eyes out. She wants to bleed for years and then some, wants to bleed and crawl and fall and die. Marcella - Marcy, they call her - has no idea why. She's never had depression before, she's never had any sort of mental illness, and it's completely, totally out of the blue.

Except it's not. Because the walls are white, and that's not right, they should be red. Everything in her life should be brighter than she is, she should be swallowed up in extravagant riches; she deserves that.

Right? Right. It's not like she's always lived simply. It's not like there's a picture of her, right there on the mantle, of her milking a cow on her grandfather's farm. But there is.

She wants more.

She'll never get more.

That's not fair, because she deserves more than this. Doesn't she? Does she?

Does she even want more? She was always fine with what she had before.

She doesn't know what she's thinking, so she just stops thinking. So much easier. She's relenting to something far more powerful and ancient than she is; it feels like falling backwards into a bottomless pit, like grace and beauty and the end all at once.

She stumbles into the bathroom down the hallway, overwhelmed by the sudden rush of emotions. It feels like something foreign and alien has crashed into her head, her delicate, precious mind. It's hard to think around its heavy, bold presence. So, she doesn't. She gives in, not entirely sure who she's giving in to; herself, or the dark thing with the strange eyes that has taken up residence where her logic should be.

She doesn't make it to the toilet before she throws up. The viscous, red liquid hits the basin with a splat - blood. There's an aggressive bite in the back of her throat, unnatural. It tastes like metal, but that might be the blood.

She coughs again, tentatively. Metal smacks into her teeth, rattling her skull and slicing her tongue, before slipping past her bloody lips.

Razors. Fucking razors, from her mouth - what the fucking fuck.

That's impossible. It's impossible, improbable, it just doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. Not in this world, not in the carefully crafted suburban haven so very far away from everything else she knows.

As far away as she can get from the woman with the strange eyes, but not far enough, never far enough. She can never get away - she should've known. She should've known the second she started thinking thoughts that weren't hers -

but they were. Weren't they? They had to be. Preposterous. Everything that went on in her head was product of her own mind and no one else's.

That's why her fingers were fumbling with the razors. The lethal, impossibly sharp edges sliced the hardened skin of her calloused fingers. Blood, thin and fast, sprung from the wounds, rolling over the knobs and knuckles of her hands.

All her. She could prove it, too. This life was enough for her, just enough; but a drop more, and she'd spill over, blood sliding over the rim.

She looks at the razors - one in her left hand, the other in her right. They weigh the same. They're both deadly, dangerous. Beautiful, under the blood, simple, gleaming metal. Simple. Too simple, like everything around her seems destined to be.

Marcella is filled with a sudden and vicious anger. It leaves her blind, open to attack; her arms are moving before she can register that she's not the one who told them to.

It's a somber, cold day.

Then again, it's California. It's not very cold, and there's few people who are very somber; they're still bustling, busy with their lives and jobs. Dipper wonders if that's supposed to be something fulfilling, like a life goal, an aspiration; it just sounds boring and dreary. Then again, lots of things sound boring and dreary on the way to a funeral.

Dipper self-consciously pulls at his collar. The suit he's wearing - black jacket, black undershirt, and black pants - is tailored and expensive, courtesy of his aunt Marissa. She was a reasonably wealthy fashion designer, and also the reason Mabel started making her own clothes.

His bow tie - which Marissa had insisted upon - was pure white. It's supposedly symbolic, but Dipper had tuned that part of the fashion speech out.

If he was being quite honest, he didn't really care. There was only one type of symbolism he cared about anyway.

Mabel's in the seat next to him, clad in a slim black dress with a thin layer of lace over it. There's a white ribbon tied carefully into her dark, curled hair. It's a jarring sight. Mabel's hair is usually in a wild disarray.

She looks uncomfortable, all in all. Like a toy with its string wound tight.

Dipper winces at the thought.

His scattered train of thought disperses completely. He settles for staring aimlessly out of the window while the car - black, like his mood - shuttles down the road.

He's been doing that, lately, losing track of his own head. Ever since he walked into his mother's bathroom and slipped on her blood. Quite literally, too; he'd fallen face-first into his mother's corpse.

Sometimes he hated being six-foot-three. He forgot to look down, forgot to see the dead body and the blood under his feet before walking forward like a total dumbass.

He sighs. He's sure Mabel hears him, but neither of them really have the energy to respond to much.

Senior year is hard enough, he thinks. We don't need this.

But they've got it, it's the only hand they've got. They've got to deal. Adapt. It's what people do, dodge the circumstances and evolve. So Dipper sucks in a breath as his dad pulls the car to a stop, and lets it out, somehow feeling more prepared now that he's made an attempt at something other than being mopey.

The shift in the atmosphere is immediate; suddenly, Mabel seems a lot closer than she had been, a lot more comforting.

Okay. Just keep doing that trying thing. Really, it can't be too hard; plenty of people do it.

Dipper hadn't accounted for actually getting out of the car, which sapped his second wind like a vaguely depressing leach.

Dipper sighs, again. Like he always does. What's with that, anyway? Why do human beings show exasperation with an exhale of breath? Shouldn't they store that oxygen for more important things?

"Alright," his dad said. "We're here."

Dipper nods, and feels a sudden burst of pity when he looks at his father's face. Over the last week, his father had somehow thinned, looking less like a broad-shouldered Pines and more like a willow tree, or something. A sapling, maybe.

Case in point, his father had deep, sunken eyes hounded by dark under-eye bags that bespoke of hell in a very raw, tender form. He knew the last thing his dad wanted was pity, being the testosterone junkie he usually was, but Dipper couldn't help it.

Mabel didn't look much better, but at least she was in his line of sight. The shadows cast by his father's unruly hair made the hollows look deep and threatening. Mabel was closer to the light, almost phototrophic, with a wide, owlish face highlighted by red, teary eyes. She looked less like a ghost than their father did.

"Right," Dipper croaked. "Totally."

The silence was fucking deafening. He was used to Mabel's chittering and chirping about happy things and beautiful things, he was used to his dad's imperceptible quietness - sometimes, they even got a nod, which was incredible - and his mother's soft, but loud murmurs of agreement that sounded like honey would. He was used to shoving his nose in a book and ignoring it, taking it for granted.

Dipper's since come to the conclusion that he is truly a magnificent asshole, but on some level, that's always been true.

"Okay," Mabel murmurs. Dipper's heart breaks. She sounds like a mouse, not at all like the lion he knows she is.

His aunt looks at the three of them with unveiled pity. "Come along," she says, sharply, designer heels hitting the gravel with awkward, uneven claps. Her halting, slow gait would be giggle-worthy if he was in a giggling kind of mood.

They follow without so much as a single word.

The walk isn't far. Dipper pointedly doesn't look at the individual graves as they walk. Mabel does the exact opposite, slowing down before each one and reading them, giving her respects. Dipper's humbled by it; that his sister was at her mother's funeral and was still trying to give to people she couldn't give to. His breath hitches.

He bows his head, and slows down so he doesn't tread on Mabel's flats while she walks.

The funeral party congregates around the area where they'll lower his mother's casket into the ground, all hushed tones and very, very quiet tears. Dipper's tempted to cry, but dismisses the thought. He's gotta keep up his douchebag shtick. If he gets all weepy at a funeral, he, like, loses his professional dickwad license. Can't go doing that.

He's already crying, of course, but if he keeps quiet and keeps his head low, hopefully no one will notice.

And then there's Mabel, sweeping up by his side, pressing her shoulder against his the way animals do when they want each other to know they're not alone. She still smells like their aunt's perfume; Dipper finds himself sorely missing the sickly sweet candy scent that usually follows her around.

Unconsciously, Dipper leans closer to her, draws emotional strength from her never-ending pool of power. He's not afraid to admit that his sister is a lot stronger than he is in a lot of ways.

Their dad is farther away, to Mabel's right, and Dipper can just barely see the man's head bob down as he wipes tears away. Dipper winces. He's never seen his dad cry, or show emotions other than anger and stern fatherly acceptance.

It's like getting doused with ice water. Dipper's suddenly hyper-aware of everyone else behind him, all of them glaring at the white casket.

He doesn't want anyone here - not his aunt, who's three feet to his left but still too close, not his dad, who's always too close, not cousin Jerry or uncle Bruce or all of these people he doesn't actually know - just Mabel. Just him and Mabel, beside each other, making it work, making it hurt less.

"Shit, asshole," someone mutters behind him. "That was my foot - out of my way, out of my way - coming through - hey! I've got important business that's also none of your business, get out -"

Dipper's mouth falls open.

Something in his heart soars, and for a few seconds, he can hardly believe his senses. It can't be. He knows that voice, remembers and reveres it, but he hasn't heard it since that last summer when he was twelve -

Mabel had turned to him, eyes shocked and wide, mouth open; it's like looking into a mirror. They turn around together.

He looks almost exactly the same.

Grunkle Stan had swapped the green suit for a cheap black one, with a simple white dress shirt and the Mr. Krabs tie Mabel had sent him two Christmases ago. It's a funeral, and the tie is probably seen as an insult, but neither of them care - it's special to them. It's for them.

They haven't seen him since they were twelve, and then he shows up at a funeral with a Mr. Krabs tie - it's so, incredibly Stan that Dipper can scarcely believe it.

He's here for them, not because anyone else had asked him to be. Dipper's heart - achy with the strain of so many damn feelings - swells.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel shrieks, and crashes into Stan with all of the force of hurricane. Mabel, being almost as tall as he is - which is intimidating to literally everyone they meet, because, holy shit, girls got that tall - wasn't a joke. Her tackle hugs could take someone out. Dipper would know.

"Oh my God," Stan wheezed. Dipper could just make out his face around Mabel's hair. "You're supposed to be tiny little butterfly kids, what the hellhappened here."

Dipper laughs - a real, honest one - and things don't seem so dreary and dull like they had in the car. (After all, Stan had literally just called him a butterfly child. Things didn't get more colorful than that.)

"Mabel!" their aunt snapped. "You'll ruin your dress!"

"We haven't seen him in five years," Dipper said, leaning towards her. "Cut us some slack."

"You're at least acting with a little class, you know," she said, miffed. "You're still upright."

Oh, no. Not the Mabel-is-crazy-and-Dipper-isn't dichotomy again. "I'm just waiting my turn," he replied, with a lopsided, odd grin.

Sure enough, after a flabbergasted Stan is once again upright, Dipper tackles him in a hug. Instead of breaking the old man's back, which, honestly, he probably could have done in his excitement, he settles for a powerful hug. Out of spite, and with a glare at aunt Marissa, he lifts Stan off the ground a couple of inches.

"Kid!" Stan shrieks - holy shit, he'd outright shrieked. He might have broken something important, like a pelvis or his great uncle's pride.

Dipper puts him down and straightens his jacket. "Couldn't let Mabel outdo me."

"Pffft," Mabel said. "I outdo you in everything."

Dipper nodded to her, a strange, sideways tick of the head he'd learned a long time ago when Mabel had made her official claim to the spot directly to his right. "This is true."

Grunkle Stan popped his back with his hands, with a muttered 'oh, everything hurts.' Then, he said, "I always knew you were a wimpass, Dipper."

Dipper sighs, resolute. "Thank you, thank you. One day I'm going to wrestle a crocodile and prove you wrong."

Mabel giggles. It sounds like the bells of heaven. She slings an arm around him. "Love ya, broseph, but you're never gonna wrestle a crocodile."

Dipper huffs. "I totally could. I mean, I'd die, but I could do it."

"You can wrestle the damn dinosaurs," Grunkle Stan cursed. "They come out every summer. How am I supposed to explain the skyscraper sized brachiosaurus in my backyard?"

Dipper's heart stops beating for a minute. Gravity Falls. The not-so-sleepy town smack-dab in Bumfuck, Nowhere, Oregon. Filled to the brim with mysteries and oddities and the wildest things imaginable, and some things that weren't, a new supernatural curiosity hanging around every corner.

Dipper takes a breath, steels himself. Tucks his longing and childlike wonder away into a deep fold of his mind. He's never going back. He can't.

He coughs, interrupting the silence that had fallen over them.

"What brings you down here?" Dipper asked.

Grunkle Stan glared at him above his glasses. "The weather. It's great! No snow!"

The first part was definitely sarcastic, but he couldn't quite tell about the second part. Didn't Oregon get quite a bit of snow this year? "Uh - was that sarcastic or…?"

Mabel giggled, again. "Dipshit," she coughed.

"Is it beat-Dipper-with-a-metaphorical-stick day?" Dipper mutters.

"That's on Wednesdays," Stan said. "Today's... probably Monday."

"Grunkle Stan," Mabel said. "It is Wednesday."

Stan's eyes widen comically. "Great Barrier Reef, time flies fast when you're old."

Dipper grins. He'd missed this banter, the stuff they easily fall into even though they've spent five years apart; it makes him wish they'd kept going back, that he'd spat in the face of danger and death and danced on a high wire.

Instead, they'd gone to stay on their maternal grandfather's farm, a quaint place with lots of cows and ancient values. The only thing interesting about that place was the pegasus herd in one of the fields his grandfather had been hoping to adapt into pasture.

"I'm only in town for a week," Stan said. "Make your sappy confessions of how I'm the greatest Grunkle ever short and sweet."

"Eh," Dipper said. "Too much effort." He was rewarded with a slap to the back of his head from Stan, who grumbled under his breath. But his smile was fond.

Mabel slaps his arm playfully. "Mr. Pines," she said, mocking their English teacher's voice - deep and ridiculously gritty.

"But Mr. Beaton," Dipper responded, speaking through his nose - stupidly high and nasally. The typical teenager voice.

"You sound like you're twelve when you do that," Mabel said.

Dipper curls his lip and sticks his tongue out at her. Suck it, my voices are great.

Mabel spreads her hands and plants them atop her head like moose antlers. You look like a lumberjack.

Dipper huffed. The awkward lumberjack look was totally in.

Grunkle Stan slapped them both on the back of the head. Jeeze, what is with that gesture? "Knock it off, or you're both my personal servants while I'm down here."

"Technically, that's child labor," Dipper said.

"It's only labor for you, noodles," Mabel said, poking his arm.

Dipper's eyes widened. Holy shit. A blush crept up his cheeks. "Mabel -"

Grunkle Stan busted out into wheezing, old-guy laughter. "Noodles! Ha! Pool floats are hilarious."

"Hilariously dumb," Mabel said, with a broad grin.

Totally not what I was thinking, Dipper thought. But he laughed anyway.

After their laughter had subsided, the cold, grim feeling seeped into his bones. The unfamiliar faces in unforgiving suits set him on edge; he felt like a cornered animal.

The priest was ready to speak.

In the back of his mind, Dipper wondered what had taken him so long.

Dipper's mood, bolstered by his family, dwindled.

It was a curse. The more people talked in monotones, the more his mind wandered. Wandering heads wasn't a good thing; they tended to get lost. In the decapitated sense.

He kept his eyes brazenly on the casket. It was a small act of bravery. He was going to do it, he swore, he was going to come to terms with his mother's death - and he was going to be damn okay with it. He had a sister and he had the man behind him and all those people way back in Gravity Falls. He could take those memories and thrive. He could. He just had to try.

And then they started to lower the casket. His mental pep-talk flew out the window. It was just an effort of crying silently, which, to his pride's great pleasure, was a success.

Somewhere between one word and the next, Grunkle Stan's hand had landed between his shoulder blades. It didn't move - it was there, like sun-warmed stone. It was the only thing holding him up and keeping him together in front of the congregation.

Dipper closed his eyes, awarded himself a moment to be thankful, to be glad. It was strange what the presence of the right person - or people - could do.

Dipper fumbled for Mabel's hand awkwardly - it was shaking violently against her thigh - and slipped his fingers through hers. Mabel's hands were clammy and he hoped he was doing this comforting shit right.

He sucked at that. All he knew was hugging and listening and the occasional shoulder-pat.

Mabel squeezed his hand tight. Dipper cussed under his breath - her grip was like iron, jeeze. She chuckled beside him.

"Whaddya say we go for something to eat," Stan said, voice light. "I saw a pillage-able shack on the way up."

Pillage-able. Dipper snorted.

"Grunkle Stan, you would be proud," Mabel said. "Dipper and I haven't paid to go out to eat ever."

Dipper shrugged. "It's true."

Grunkle Stan gawked, and then slapped them both on the back, hard enough to make them stumble. "Bathroom-and-run trick?"

"Yep!" Mabel said, popping the last letter with her tongue.

"Hah!" Grunkle Stan cackled. "I've got a new one. Daisy 8's?"

"They're good," Dipper said. "I'm down."

They started off, back down the hill. Dipper stayed behind - just a moment.

He looked at the scene around him, the graves, the flowers surrounding his mother's picture. He felt cold in his flesh, like he'd just swallowed ice and it had gone through his bloodstream. Like he'd been injected with antifreeze.

The night his mom had died - when he'd gone upstairs to ask her what was for dinner - he'd felt like it was going to happen. He knew something was up, could feel it, deep in marrow; the atmosphere had changed. It had felt like stepping into the Mystery Shack for the first time, all those years ago. That sick feeling of knowing he wasn't the only one in the room no matter which room he was in.

And she'd carved triangles on her arms, up and down, in neat, tiny rows. Even the ones drawn with her non-dominant hand had been perfect, hateful things. But Dipper knew that, given the terms of a deal he'd made a very long time ago, that it couldn't have been Bill. Demon deals were too binding for that.

Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was murder, not a suicide.

"Dipper!" Mabel called. "Are you coming?"

Dipper turned to yell back, "Yeah!"

He could think about it later. For now, he was starving.


	3. VLR ZXK'Q LRQORK ERKDBO

**A/N: Oh my gosh! Okay, I'm so sorry about me not posting anything lately, haha. There's really no excuse to not get you guys caught up because AO3 is on chapter 8. So, whoops, you guys can kick me in the ass whenever you want to. All warnings apply, suicide mentions (obviously, hah), violence, and such. Thanks for reviewing/following and I'll get better about replying to you guys once I start figuring out FFN (AO3 is so much simpler, ahhhhh)**

 **Anyway, if you've got any questions, hit me up at .com, review, or PM me!**

The school looks like a prison; gray and low to the ground.

Mabel dismisses it. School's always been at least a little fun, even on her worst days.

Today, of course, counts as one of her worst days. Her mother is dead, six feet under, kicked the bucket, all of those other little phrases that she can't stand anymore. She'll never see her again. Mabel almost crumbles on the spot.

But then Dipper's arm is sweeping under her own, wrapping her in for a hug before she can lose her resolve completely.

He's a lot better at comforting people than he gives himself credit for. He's also a lot stronger than she gives him credit for - a lot stronger than her, in a lot of different ways.

She's not afraid to admit that she buries her face into his shoulder. She needs a hug right about now.

"Text me," he says, breath rustling her hair. "If you - uh - need something."

Mabel chuckles. To people who don't know Dipper, it would have seemed like the endearingly sweet overprotective brother thing again. There's more to it than that though - he's got a heart, too, under his pride. It's as much of a lifeline for him as it is for her.

"No problemo, bro-bro," she says, releasing him. Dipper nods, gazing at her with watery eyes.

 _Oh, no_ , Mabel thinks. _Don't go lost moose puppy on me. Please no. If you cry I cry. Come on Dippy Daisies._

She pulls off his hat - the same, sun-faded blue one he'd gotten from the Mystery Shack. "You can't wear this in school, you big dummy."

She punches his shoulder. She lets it hit his shoulder full-force. To his credit, Dipper doesn't wince - but he does stumble a bit, making Mabel grin.

Dipper grumbles. "What even is the point of that rule? If I want a hat, I should totally get a hat. It's my hat. It's my head."

"It's their school," Mabel says. She takes the lead and starts walking towards the building. If they stay out here much longer, they'll freeze their tooshes off, and Mabel likes her toosh, thank you very much.

"I do what I want," Dipper says.

Mabel giggles. "Oh, really now?"

"Absolutely," Dipper replies. "I, like, rule the world."

"I call executive of -"

"Glitter and small animals, I've got you covered," Dipper says. They're at the door now, and Mabel feels lurid fear crawl up her spine.

They'd decided to come in a nine o'clock instead of eight twenty-five, so they could see Grunkle Stan off. That, and neither of them were really looking forward to returning to school. They'd never had the best reputation among their peers; Dipper was too quiet and geeky, Mabel was too loud and too flamboyant. Too much here, not enough there.

Mabel had long since learned to live with it - after all, she was different, she was loud, she was weird; but these things didn't bother her. However, she'd never quite stopped leaping to Dipper's side. He never did anything. He was quiet, kept to himself, and only stood up when she was the one in question; he didn't deserve it.

Mabel sticks her tongue out at him. "I knew you had my back."

Dipper rubs the back of his neck. "About the -"

" - texting thing," Mabel says. "Got it. Don't worry about me, brozo. I got this." Mabel pulls a Rosie the Riveter pose. "I mean, look at these guns!"

Dipper laughs. "Alright, Wonder Woman."

Mabel's eyes widen and she gasps. "Yes! My true calling! I know what I'm going to college for, Dippy!"

"Oh, really? I can't go to college to be a Ghostbuster but you can be Wonder Woman?" Dipper says.

"Hello?"

Mabel jolts out of their conversation, turning to the dark-skinned woman at the desk.

"Are we checking in?" the woman asks.

"Oh! Uh, yeah," Dipper says, sheepishly. "Sorry."

"That's fine," the lady - Mrs. Golia - says. "I have a sister. I understand sibling banter."

Mabel chuckles, tersely. She wishes she didn't have to go to school. She wishes she could sit here and poke fun with her brother all day long and never have to worry about a thing.

But then there's Dipper's hand, warm as ever, in between her shoulder blades and gently nudging her to the sign-in counter.

"Names?" Mrs. Golia asks.

"Ah - uh, Dipper and Mabel Pines," Dipper says.

Mabel swallows around her dry throat. Fine, fine, she was going to be fine - she won't go home and see her mother and hug her, but she'll still love her, even if she isn't there to see. That's enough.

It will be. She just has to try. If she ever gets tired of trying, she's got Dipper to fall back on, because he's always there, waiting, just in case. She takes a deep breath, steeling herself.

School is no big deal. She's stared down monsters, zombies, demons, she even rode a pegasus once - she can do this.

"Oh!" Mrs. Golia says, and scribbles down their names on their respective passes. "I have something for the both of you, courtesy of my wife."

Mabel blinks.

Mrs. Golia leans down and pulls out two small packages. "She works at Godiva," she explains. "She made you gift baskets, on the house. She also told me to tell you that you can stop in for free ice cream whenever you'd like."

Mabel's cheeks flush. Not because she was embarrassed - just overwhelmed. It wasn't pity, just a helping hand, extended to the both of them when they needed it. Her eyes start to water.

"Oh my gosh," she gushes. "You're - you're both - tell her I said thank you, so, so much."

Dipper chuckles, taking his basket and pocketing it. "Thank you, Mrs. Golia."

Mrs. Golia gives them a warm smile. "It's not a problem. If you ever do need anything, don't be afraid to come to me."

Mabel nods. "Can-do will-do, Mrs. G!"

Mrs. Golia slides them their passes, and the twins are on their way.

Mabel pops a chocolate into her mouth.

"Sweet mercy," she says. "This is the bestest most incrediblest thing I have ever tasted."

She looks over - Dipper was already on his third. "Jeeze! Dipster, didn't we just eat breakfast?"

He glares at her and pops a fourth truffle into his mouth. "I am a growing boy, thank you very much."

"Who just ate, like, eight pancakes. Seriously. You took my chocolate ones!"

Dipper shrugs. "Get downstairs faster next time."

"I'm feeling a little competition here," she says. She jabs a thumb at her chest. "I am Queen Sugarspice. You are a Twizzler-loving traitor."

"Twizzlers are the bomb," he says. "Fight me."

"Oh, you wanna go?" she threatens, raising a fist. "You wanna throw down?"

Dipper grins. "Totally, right here, right now."

"Oh, it's on, Twinkletoes -"

Dipper darts in and jabs her side, causing Mabel to buck. "No! Tickle spots are off limits!"

"Not in this reality!" He replies, darting in for another two-faced attack.

"I substitute your reality with my own!" she shouts, and cracks their heads together.

Not the best idea. Dipper stumbles backwards and she has to hold on to the wall to keep from falling down. That was way easier when they were twelve.

"That was a much better idea when we were twelve," Dipper says, voicing her thoughts.

"My reality sucks," she moans. "I give up. You win, you back-stabbing, jerky-turkey."

Dipper sticks his tongue out at her, and then unravels his chocolate bar and takes a bite.

Mabel rubs her forehead. "I demand a rematch after school."

"Meet me in the pit," Dipper says, taking another bite.

Mabel fishes out her packet and pulls out the raspberry-filled one. "Here."

Dipper eyes it suspiciously. "Are you sure?"

"Of course!" she says. "You know how I feel about raspberry filling and chocolate."

"'It's a disgusting affront to humanity and you're going to abolish it when you're president'," he quotes, pocketing the candy bar.

"Hells yeah," she says.

They'd walked deep into the center of the school, and were turning down the English hall.

"Ready to brave Mr. Beaton?" she asks.

Dipper sighs. "Don't remind me."

Mabel grins. "He _luuuuuuurves_ me, though."

"Ugh," Dipper groans, and they open the door to an analysis of Jane Eyre.

That's how the majority of their day went.

Mabel and Dipper were lucky enough to have three of their four classes together, but they were split apart after third. Mabel was to attend Cosmetics and Dipper was dragged off to a science class halfway across the school.

The cosmetics room wafts a scent of honey and hairspray on most days, courtesy of Ms. Beckley's taste in Scentsy. The lights were overly bright, which didn't help make the ghastly, pale yellow walls any nicer to look at. The desks were covered in an assortment of lewd drawings and curses written in every color of pen under the sun. The practice dolls - which looked disturbingly like decapitated heads - were typically strewn about the room, giving it a cluttered and claustrophobic feeling.

That's not what she hates about this place; it's the pale-skinned girl with the furious red hair. As soon as she walks in through the door, Mabel knows that she's in for an hour and thirty minutes of hell.

"Oh, look," Melanie Wright, her table partner, sneers. "She dared to show her face today."

Mabel swallows down her bitterness and replaces it with a beaming smile. "Hello!"

Melanie wrinkles her nose. "Yeah, freak. So? What happened to Mommy Dearest last week?"

Mabel flinches, and Melanie's grin turns nasty. "What, don't want to fill us in?"

 _She's not this cruel, really,_ Mabel thinks. _It's a joke. She'll stop._

Marco, one of Melanie's cronies, speaks up. "C'mon, sweetcheeks, tell us about that juicy gossip."

Mabel sits down hesitantly. It takes a couple of swallows to find her voice. "There's nothing much to say."

"Do it quick, while MacBeth is out of the room. No batty teacher over your shoulders," Giani says, from the seat directly behind Mabel.

"My dad said she had triangles carved into her arms," Melanie says. _Of course,_ Mabel thinks. _Her dad's an EMT._

Mabel is dimly aware that she's shaking. She pulls out Mrs. Golia's gift. "Chocolate?" she offers, weakly. _Please, leave me alone_.

Melanie snatches the whole bag out of her hand. "Thanks for the donation."

"Ooh - any with raspberry filling?" Marco asks, pulling the bag from Melanie's grasp. "Ah, what! It's not a gift bag without raspberry filling!"

Mabel grins to herself, victorious. She's suddenly viciously glad that she'd given the raspberry bar to Dipper earlier.

Giani slaps him in the back of the head.

"Give me all the gorey deets," Melanie says. "I'm just curious, y'know. Can't even blame me. I'm gonna be a psychologist."

 _That's not why you're asking,_ Mabel thinks, but she doesn't voice anything. _Keep the smile. Keep the smile._

"Yeah," Marco says. "What's with the triangles, anyway? Why not ovals? Those are rad as heck."

"... The definition of oval is literally 'it's kinda egg-shaped.'"

"Shut it, Gi."

Melanie leans close enough for Mabel to catch a whiff of her strawberry-scented breath. "Why'd she commit, though? Didn't she have, like, the perfect life?"

"Please, stop asking," Mabel says. "I really don't want to talk about it."

 _She's got to be joking,_ Mabel thinks. _People don't do this. People can't possibly be this bad. I didn't do anything to them. They'll stop._

"Yeah, Mels," Giani says, her tone joking. "You're being nosy."

"Oh, dear me," Melanie says. "And stop interrupting me! I've still got psych class. I can do my thesis on this."

"Don't," Mabel snaps.

Melanie leans in close, this time, and whispers, "I heard your brother was covered in blood."

Mabel freezes.

"Stop!" Mabel shouts. "I told you to stop!"

Melanie jerks back, but keeps smiling that _damned_ smile. "So, that's what presses your buttons? Your brother? Do you even care about your mom?"

Mabel feels tears spring to her eyes.

"Mels," Giani says. "I'm being serious. Not cool."

"Y-yeah," Marco says, shaky. "Back off."

"You think she killed herself because of you?" Melanie says, and something in Mabel snaps.

"You know what?" she growls. "You're damn right it's not cool. It wasn't cool to begin with." She turns to Melanie. "And you - you -"

"... I'm right, aren't I?" Melanie says, eyes gleaming. "I'm totally right. Oh, this is _gold._ "

Mabel stands there, unaware of when she had actually stood up. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish. She's trembling and sweaty all over and incredibly aware of the stares that prickle against her skin like tiny needles.

Mabel doesn't waste any time. She turns on her heel and storms off, flustered and embarrassed and three seconds from bursting into tears.

"Witch!" Melanie calls after her.

On her way out, she crashes into Ms. Beckley, who was often dubbed MacBeth by her students for her strange love of Shakespeare. The short, thin teacher collapses to the ground.

"Ms. Pines!? What on Earth -"

"I'm sorry," Mabel says, choking around her tears. "I didn't mean to - my mom - I've gotta. I've gotta go, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Ms. Pines!" Ms. Beckley snaps. "What do you think you're -"

Mabel had already taken off down the hall, the wind stinging her wet cheeks. "I'm sorry, Ms. Beckley!" she shouts.

Mabel runs away from that horrible classroom until she's reached the girl's bathroom in the lobby, which she ducks into immediately. ('Ducked' wasn't even an exaggeration. They didn't make doors tall enough.)

She leans down to get a look at herself in the grimy mirror. Her tears have streaked the makeup she'd been wearing, and she rubs a sweater sleeve over it self-consciously. At least she hadn't seen anyone in the hallway.

Her hair is its usual, cascading, wavy fluff of dark brown hair that framed a blotchy red face that framed big, red eyes. There wasn't any fixing that; once she'd started crying, the redness of her eyes wouldn't fade for a good four hours.

She would have to go back there soon. Someone from the office would be sent to search for her, and she'd be subjected to a harsh punishment for ditching.

Mabel finds herself not wanting to go back. She doesn't want to be here. Nobody could have asked her to be ready for that, and it isn't fair to herself to think that she should've been.

She pulls out her phone and texts Dipper.

' _rough cosmo class. :('_

She settles herself against the wall of the girls' bathroom, slowing her breathing and replaying the scene in her mind. The more she did, the less she liked herself.

It didn't take long for Dipper to respond.

' _You can leave if you need to.'_

God, it was like he knew what she was thinking, even when he was all the way across the school!

' _i was thinking about it, lol'_

Dipper replies almost immediately.

' _I can skip class.'_

' _don't. jackson'll get angry at you'_

' _Well, fuck Jackson. You're more important.'_

Mabel grins at the phone - but then remembers what Melanie had said. He was the one covered in blood that night - their mother's blood. A stone settles in her stomach. She doesn't want to ask, of course. She doesn't want to think about anyone being covered in blood, much less her brother. But it's something she never thought about, it's something she never considered; she owes it to him to ask, whether he wants to talk about it or not.

' _dipper?'_

' _Yeah?'_

' _does it ever bother you?'_

' _What does/'_

' _*?'_

Mabel stares at her phone for a while. Maybe it was a little personal. Should she even ask?

' _remember how melanie's dad is an emt?'_

' _Yeah..?'_

' _she told me that he said that you were'_

Mabel stopped typing, but then mentally slapped herself. This was Dipper. There wasn't anything she couldn't talk to him about.

She finishes the text and sends it.

In the pause that follows, she can feel Dipper thinking about her question, mulling it over in his big, dumb brain. She wonders if she's just hit on something, some facet to the problem that she hadn't encountered before.

' _It did, I guess. I mean - I didn't realize it? But I remember the feeling. It - it doesn't creep me out NOW, even though i know that, ostensibly, it's totally creepy. I don't know what to say. Did that even make sense? I don't know.'_

' _i got what you meant :) around the big fancy words, lmfao. u can figure out what to say and talk to me about it later'_

She worries her lip, and then begins to type.

' _i'm busting out of here :D totally getting redbox movies and i call a movie night'_

' _You sure you don't need me?'_

' _pffft i am wonder woman i got this ;) now u go do ur big dumb brainy thing and u show jackson who's the real boss'_

' _Yeah, right.'_

' _... you think g would let me out'_

' _Totally. She thinks you're great.'_

' _IM GOING OUT THE FRONT DOOR'_

' _Uh, seriously? Sure you don't want to use the one beside the cafeteria?'_

' _i am a boss this is not how we do things dipshit'_

And with that, Mabel pockets her phone. She realizes that she'd left most of her things in Ms. Beckley's room, but she'd just go back and collect them before class tomorrow. She had a habit of just carrying around her bookbag instead of stopping by her locker - it was faster, anyway.

At least, though, her keys are in her purse, which was still fastened firmly across her chest. Then another problem occurs to her, and she pulls out her phone.

' _... can i take our car?'_

' _Go for it.'_

Oh, man. She really had a great brother.

' _i'll pick you up totes mcgotes'_

' _Don't worry about it. But that'd be nice. Just saying.'_

' _i got u i got u'_

Mabel slides her Android into her back pocket, and leaves the bathroom.

Getting out of school was easy, but this wasn't.

She'd had a faint idea of where she was going when Mrs. Golia had agreed to sneak her out, but now that it's coming to fruition, she's sure she isn't actually ready.

She tightens her grip on the flowers in her hand; her palms _ sweaty, and the slick plastic threatening to slide out of her hand. She'd only bought three roses - a blue one, a pink one, and a red one.

The walk to her mother's grave was harder than expected. She wished Grunkle Stan hadn't left town that morning. She wished she'd told Dipper to ditch with her.

But Melanie's words rang in her head, and she knew; she had to do this alone. This was her apology. She wasn't going to lean on anyone, she wasn't going to use someone else's courage.

She had this. Totally.

When she arrives at the top of the hill, she finds her eyes wandering over her mother's headstone. There is an angel carved into it, flowy robes and wings spread wide. The setting sun, far in the west, cast long, navy blue shadows over the angel's features, making the guardian look more compelling - more grim.

Mabel carefully sets the roses in the angel's waiting arms, slipping them out of the plastic.

Then, she sits down on her knees, facing the headstone like it was her mother, a real, live living thing that could hug her and love her and care about her. Tears flow out of her eyes, but she doesn't dare to stop them.

"Hi, mom," she says. "I know - whatever you're doing right now - you must be pretty busy, with all that afterlife stuff. I get it. But I… I wondered if you were watching, earlier today. I don't know how you'd do that. Maybe there's a magic looking glass."

She sighs. "I'm sorry, for - for what I didn't do. What I didn't see. It's not my fault, I know - but. Maybe I could've helped. Who knows?" She stops, hiccuping. "M-maybe you'd be alive now! I don't know what I'm saying, or if you can hear me, or…"

She trails off. She lifts a finger, shaky and pale, and begins to trace her mother's name, carved into the headstone; _Marcella Arizi Mariolo-Pines._

"I wasn't - I wasn't ready to lose you," Mabel whispers. Her heart stops beating.

She throws herself against the cold headstone, thoughts racing like a tempest, heart thrumming and thrumming, palpitating against her sternum like a racehorse. Mabel's eyes squeezed shut, hot, salty liquid leaking out and running down her nose and she felt gross and ugly but she didn't care.

She wanted her mom. She wanted her back, would give anything to crush her slim figure into a hug and be able to tell her how much she loved her -

"I wasn't ready to lose you."

Mabel's eyes snap open. She flew backward, backpedaling as fast as she could.

The ghost chuckles. "Sorry, honey, it's a little hard to manifest with roses. Orchids are easier, I believe, but I haven't had the experience to know for sure."

 **A/N: DAH DAH DAHHHHH... the ending everyone expected. HAH. Alright, what'd you guys think?**


	4. R MVVW HLNV HPVKGRXZOH ULI GSRH

**A/N: Aloha my fine lovelies! Back again, late as ever, but better late then never! :D Based on the new followers and favorite-rs, I'm taking it we liked the last chapter? Anyway, as always, questions, comments, concerns (and maybe love letters, ooh la la) go either in the reviews, PMs, comments on AO3, or messages through tumblr. The URL is jerseydevious, as it hasn't changed, oops.**

There's a tight feeling in her chest that's taking up all the room her heart needs to work. Her breath comes in short, thick gasps, harsh enough to wound Mabel's throat even in the cool California air.

"Sorry," Marcella repeats. It sounded like she was speaking from the other side of a fan. "I have been having a… difficult time."

A difficult time. _A difficult time!?_

"You've been having a difficult time!?" Mabel snaps, but immediately balks. "I'm - I didn't mean that."

"It's quite alright."

Mabel finds herself at a loss for words, and that's a rare occurrence enough. It feels like everything in her had stopped working, and that she would collapse - or wake up - any second. It feels like a dream. It feels like a nightmare.

Marcella - her mom - was sitting on one of the angel's broad, carefully sculpted wings. The nightgown she had died in swirled in a nonexistent, supernatural breeze. Her short, dark hair swirled around her features, sharp and angled. She just looked like a glow-y, float-y person.

She didn't look like the ghosts Mabel remembered from Gravity Falls.

"M-mom," she whispers.

Her mom smiles, teeth blindingly white. "Mabel - oh, _God,_ Mabel."

Her mom was in front of her without hardly any effort, disappearing between one place and the next like a - ghost. _A ghost._ Her mom is still dead, she just had unfinished business.

Mabel sobs. "Mom."

Marcella's hands are suddenly on her shoulders. She could see them - even imagined she could hear the air flow through her fingers as she moved them - but she couldn't feel them. All she felt was a sudden, cold numbness, like a cold spot in water.

"Mabel," she says. "I'm so, _so_ sorry. And I - I hope you can understand, one day. I really do."

Mabel backtracks mentally. Everything was wrong. Everything was bad, and odd, and weird and strange and _this isn't_ _right._

"Wait - you're a ghost. I'm not shocked at all. How are you not, y'know, questioning this?"

"I saw the journal Dipper brought back with him," Marcella answers. Mabel notices, now that she was close, that her eyes are solid white. It strengthens the knot in her stomach.

 _This isn't right, this isn't right._

"How did you know -"

"The Pines family isn't the only supernaturally-inclined family in the world," Marcella states, like that's not terrifying, like Mabel isn't imagining hundreds of people looking the way Dipper did on that day five years ago.

 _I wasn't going to ask anything about that_ , Mabel thinks. _How did she know the journal was about the supernatural?_

The gears in Mabel's head sputter. "What? You - you - _all this time_ , you knew, _you knew_ , and you didn't tell us!"

 _What's going on?_

Marcella blinks. "You didn't tell me, either."

The response brought Mabel up short. They hadn't, had they? "I'm sorry," she murmurs.

"I don't blame you," Marcella assures. Mabel feels a cold wind as her mom's ghostly hand entwines itself in her hair. "You have such beautiful, long hair, dear. I really wish I hadn't cut mine. Oh - you need a trim! These split ends -"

Mabel blinks back tears. She'd missed this - this thing they did, moms. The way they picked and needled and showed their loved by prodding and pushing. She hated it. But it was what made them moms.

"You didn't come to talk about my split ends," Mabel complains. "And, jeeze! They can't be that bad."

Marcella's face darkens. "I didn't, did I? And, yes, dear, they very much are. Please schedule a haircut."

Mabel sighs, rolling her eyes, but grins anyway. Something like elation had sprung into her chest, like flowers reclaiming a patch of weeds. But her head was still reeling, still jumping and hissing, screaming, _danger._

Marcella moves her hands back to Mabel's shoulders and grips them hard, eyes meeting Mabel's.

"I need to teach you something," she says.

Mabel blinks. "How to call the hairdresser?"

"No. Magic. Specifically, blood magic -"

" - no," Mabel says, shaking her head. "I don't want to. I want to wake up. This is a dream."

Marcella's expression softens. "You're perfectly awake, honey."

"No, no, no," Mabel says. "I don't want to. No supernatural stuff. I'm _done._ Me and Dipper both swore it off five years ago."

Marcella blinks. "Why?"

Mabel swallows against the fear in her throat - it tastes like blood. She feels like she's drowning in it, the blood, like her head had been pushed under and if she took a breath it'd be in her lungs. It slides over her skin, the same way she remembered. "Topic change!"

She can't do this now, not now. Not - not that.

If Marcella noticed her discomfort, she didn't let her know.

"Mabel, listen to me. There's a… a storm coming. A bad moon's rising. There's something out there," she gestures to the sprawling cityscape in the east, "that's awakening."

"This sounds like a cheesy Harry Potter fanfiction," Mabel says. "Mom - please, just, _go back._ Okay, that sounds rude, but -"

Marcella looks affronted. "I know what's best for you, and that's why I'm here. And give me some credit, darling, I'm trying."

Mabel shakes her head. "This isn't happening. It's not. My mom's completely normal!"

"A normal mother wouldn't be saving your life right now," Marcella says. "You're lucky to have me."

"No!" Mabel screams. "I told you, I don't want anything to do with it!"

Why are people pushing her past her limits today?

"You do," Marcella growls. "You were born into this."

"You weren't there," Mabel says, gesticulating madly. "You weren't _there!_ You didn't see it - you didn't - you haven't seen what I have. _You haven't!"_

 _You didn't see him,_ she meant to say. _You don't have nightmares about it. You don't wake up screaming. You don't get nervous that your brother isn't going to be there when you turn around._

Marcella gives her that knowing parental smirk that all children hate. "I've seen it. I've been there. But you have to trust me."

"Why?" Mabel asks.

"Because everything I've ever done, I've done for this family," she says.

 _Grunkle Stan, I trust you._

"Now listen to me," Marcella says, taking Mabel's hands and unfolding the fingers that had balled into fists. "You have a talent. Magic is in your blood on two sides of your family. And the things out there - they can smell it. And they want it."

She shudders.

"I've dealt with them before," Mabel says. "I can do it again. Watch me."

Marcella chuckles, dryly. "There's a new beast on the horizon, Mabel. You're not ready this time."

She takes a leaf out of Dipper's book and says, dryly, "I don't see anything."

Marcella glares at her. "Oh, no. There's two of them. Honestly, your brother was enough. Really, let me explain."

Mabel rips her hands back and crossed her arms. "Hit it."

"I can teach you blood magic," she says. "This is an offer. I can't keep coming back. If you don't accept, you willingly leave yourself defenseless. I - I can't help you after that."

 _My mother came back from the dead and all she wants to talk about is magic._

"Don't think like that," she admonishes.

"Were you reading my thoughts?" Mabel hisses.

 _I hope you can hear me,_ she thinks, harshly. _This is my head. Stay out. I've had enough of that._

Marcella flinches. "Honey, I'm sorry -"

She looks lost, ghostly shoulders slumped and tired. Mabel realizes that she didn't want _ this. That involving her daughter in the realm of the paranormal was the last thing she wanted. The lines on her face looked drawn, exhausted; she looked purposefully tired, like Dipper sometimes did when he stayed up late researching for his history papers. Like she knew what she was doing, but didn't want to _have_ to do it.

Mabel's anger deflated. "No, no, it's okay. Just… please, don't."

She looks relieved. "I'm sorry, I'm not quite used to the specter idea."

"Mom… you've gotta understand," Mabel pleads. "All of this - it's only ever - it's only ruined things. I mean... "

Marcella shakes her head. "You have to trust me."

"I do," Mabel says. "I'm just - I'm not willing to do it. I can't."

"You can. You will. There's so much at stake here, Mabel," she says. "You don't understand, yet. I never wanted you to - but there's no option left."

Never had Mabel thought of her mother as being an objective person. She'd always thought her mother had run on a live-in-the-moment way; she was the person who inspired Mabel to be who she was, exactly the way she was. Her mom was the foundation to everything she knew.

She didn't even know her mom. She wondered what she actually did know, if everything really _was_ a conspiracy like that dumb triangle used to say.

She needed stability. She needed Dipper.

"Mom, I'm sorry," she says.

"You have to," Marcella says. "It's for the best."

"No, it's not."

"Before it's too late," Marcella says. "We need to begin immediately."

She has burning questions; one, in particular, was making her mind do somersaults. Melanie's words wreathe through her head like a toxin.

"Why did you do it?" Mabel blurts, but then brings her hands to her mouth. She hadn't meant to actually ask.

"You don't need to know," Marcella answers, immediately.

That was fast. That was _too_ fast. Mabel really didn't know what to make of that.

"I need -"

 _CRASH!_

Mabel whirls around. "Oh, God, that sounded like breaking glass - " she turns around to face the ghost again. "Can you -"

Gone. She was _gone._

"Mom?" she calls.

Nothing - not a breeze. Mabel's shoulders slump. She hadn't noticed how comfortable the ghost's presence was until it was gone.

She furiously rubs at her runny nose. "Okay," she says. "Wow."

"... What am I doing?" she asks the stone angel. "Why am I here?"

The question falls to the ground like lead. "Mom?" she asks, again. Her voice is quiet and soft, making her feel all of nine years old.

Was that whole thing a dream? It had to be. There was no way - everything had happened so fast, so _un-Mom-like_ , so strange and weird. She'd been underwater for too long, and she needed to come up for air. This was nothing. She fell asleep here.

She recognizes the fact that she's in denial. But nobody ever said she had to come back here; with any luck, her mother's ghost would never approach her again.

Mabel trots down the hill, anxious to get away from the angel with the boring eyes and the roses and her mother's ghost.

When she gets to the parking lot, she's just able to glimpse a car pulling out of the exit. She begins to walk forward - maybe she could get a better look at the model -

and then falls face-first, hands thrown out to break her fall. A sharp, hot pain sears through her left hand and her left knee as they made harsh contact with the ground.

She is shaky when she stands up, grimacing at the sting. Standing on her tip-toes to catch the yellow light of the lamppost, she carefully inspects her palm; broken shards of glass. Which meant…

She turns to look at the driver's window. Shattered. The air in her lungs flies out in a rush. _Seriously?_

The corner of her eyes catch red - and there _it_ is. She holds a hand to her mouth in shock. The red spraypaint was hastily applied and messy, but the writing is still legible;

 _WITCH._

Mabel sank to the ground, not caring that she's sitting on broken glass, not caring that she's facing her slashed tires. She doesn't care that she doesn't have a way home, she doesn't care that it was dark out and she doesn't care that people were probably looking for her.

Her mother was dead, she might be seeing things, and these people hated her - she didn't even know what she'd _done._ What did she ever do to them?

She pulls her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead down and shutting herself off from the rest of the world. She is suddenly glad she'd parked next to the abandoned car with a 'For Sale' sign stuck in the back window - it offered protection.

She needed some.

She wasn't ready to lose her mom, she wasn't ready for these people and their cruel jokes, she wasn't ready to learn blood magic - she just wants to go home and for everything to be normal. She wants Grunkle Stan to come down from Gravity Falls and live with them, and she wants Wendy and Soos and Pacifica and Grenda and Candy.

That in and of itself was horrible, because she never wanted to think of Gravity Falls again, because it made her hands itch to touch her brother and make sure he was real. Alive.

She wanted more. She wasn't going to get more.

She sobs into her crossed arms and rocks back and forth

Then a car pulls up beside hers, loud and jarring. She wishes it would go away and burn in hell. She didn't want to talk right now.

She pulls the neck of her sweater over her nose and eyes, so all she could smell is her sweat and all she could hear was her breathing. So what if the stranger is a murderer? Right now, she didn't have the strength to care.

The car door slams. She knows it's Dipper as soon as he starts walking - he had a small jump in his gait, like a hiccup in his step, from where he'd all but ruined his knee in Gravity Falls.

He settles beside her, close, but quiet. Good. She didn't think she could deal with talking.

However, she does slip a hand out through her sleeve and grabs his hand. He rubs a thumb over her knuckles, deftly; somehow, the roughness of his hands comforting instead of annoying.

The seconds stretch into minutes, and she gets tired of smelling her own sweat. Dipper fidgets beside her.

She pulls the neck of her sweater down, taking a gulp of much-needed, sweet air. "Hey," she murmurs.

"Looked for you all over town," he replies, flicking a rock with his finger.

"Had a wild night on the town," she says. "You couldn't have tracked me down."

"I tried," he says, with his queer, half-grin. "You never replied."

She pulls out her phone. _Thirty-seven voice messages?_

"That's creepy stalker territory," she says. "Thirty seven?"

Dipper shrugs. "Eh."

They lapse into heavy silence. It's awkward, in a way; because she is guilty, and he is sorry, and those two only mixed well inside of one person. With two people, it's like a swirling storm cloud, two tired individuals who couldn't quite muster the strength to speak.

And then Dipper's stomach growls.

Mabel cracks up. Of all things, it would be Dipper's stomach to ruin the mood.

Dipper laughs with her, but his face was still furiously red. "Don't judge me," he says.

She leans against his shoulder. "They slashed the tires, by the way."

"Oh, damn," Dipper groans. "Looks like I have to do more than just kill them."

Mabel chuckles. "Don't strain yourself," she teases, and pokes his arm. "Like, you need more muscle mass for that."

"You're lying. I totally have muscles. They exist," Dipper says, leaning back until he's laying against the ground. Mabel stays firmly pressed against his shoulder.

It was a very Pines kind of thing to do - to cuddle over broken glass in the deserted parking lot of a cemetery. Prime sibling bonding time.

"No, they don't," Mabel retorts.

"You just don't want to admit it," he says.

"I _will_ fight you on this," Mabel shot back.

"We never met up for our rematch," Dipper replies.

Mabel thinks for a minute. "I'm too tired for all that shizbangle."

"Shizbangle. Incredible," Dipper says.

"We're lying on broken glass," she murmurs.

"I was hoping you'd notice so I had an excuse to move," he says, nudging her. His eyes catch sight of her hand. "Shit, Mabes - you're bleeding."

She looks at her hand. Oh. "Whoopsie."

"For the love of -" Dipper takes her hand and inspects it. His expression shifts to grim, the most obviously serious one he could muster. "I don't know… this looks fatal, Ms. Pines." His tone had changed to match his expression; he sounds like a doctor breaking bad news on one of those midday TV shows.

He looks down at her with a quirked eyebrow, and Mabel giggles. "Oh, good heavens, Doctor," she says, mocking the best dramatic accent she could. "Whatever will I do?"

"Can you hang on, Ms. Pines?" he says, seriously, giving her the world's most ridiculous stare. "Can you?"

Mabel bursts into a fit of giggles, and pulls her hand away. "Dipper -" she wheezes.

It was too close. Too close. She couldn't _not_ bring it up.

He turns to her. "What?"

"Remember - can you feel it, Mr. Krabs -"

"Oh my God!" Dipper bats her lightly on the head. "Don't you - I am _traumatized_!"

"That was hilarious and you know it -"

"We're leaving," Dipper announces, and snatches her uninjured hand. "We are exiting the building."

"We're outside," Mabel says.

"That too," he says.

Mabel laughs, and pushes him behind her. "I am the captain of this mission."

"Mabel, you can't drive -"

She turns to him. " _Dippy,"_ she whines.

Dipper glares at her. "Absolutely not."

"You're overprotective," she says, but Mabel lets him drag her to the passenger's side of the truck and buckle her in anyway.

"More like I want to survive," he says. "You drive like a maniac normally. With an injured hand? I don't want to imagine."

Mabel grumbles to herself. She wasn't _that_ bad. Twice the speed limit isn't maniacal.

"Wait a second," he says. "And by the way, I'm totally paying for it, so don't worry."

"Oh, no," she says. "If you need surgery, please don't."

"Try and stop me," he says. She doesn't turn around to see what he's doing, but a couple seconds later, she hears a metallic slam, which must have been their dad's toolbox.

The he comes around the driver's side of the truck holding a crowbar. He stands for a second, like he's mentally debating something, and then swings. Hard.

The windshield shatters - taking the spraypainted word with it. Mabel stares at her brother, wide-eyed.

Dipper slides into the driver's side and lays the crowbar in the area down by her feet. "I hope Melanie Wright crawls into a ditch."

Mabel slaps his arm, but doesn't respond. He doesn't push the subject - he'd probably noticed the way her frown had deepened.

"I got the movies, by the way," he says.

Mabel grins. "Badly timed all-nighter time?"

"Badly timed all-nighter time."

 **A/N: It's time for a badly timed all-nighter, myself. I've got to crack down on the updates for AO3, get the queue rolling out on tumblr, and get you guys caught up! Man, my organization is all over the place. But that's changing. Anyway, how're we feeling on this one? Good, bad, ugly?**


	5. OLDU PRQVWHU SLFNB HDWHU

**A/N: What's up, Fallers? Long time no see! I've got you all covered, though, don't worry. Today I bring you... the Dreaded Short Chapter. It had to happen eventually. We can't ALWAYS write 13 pages per update, jeeze. Alright-y, enjoy!**

Naturally, they both fall asleep somewhere around midnight, one after the other.

Dipper slips into the nightmares first; he always has. His head twists around the darkest parts of life a lot easier than Mabel's. He wakes up screaming and shaking more often than not, and sometimes spends hours jumping at stray shadows afterwards. His imagination, quite frankly, is a bitch.

He can't move, in the dream. He can feel the wet, rough concrete against the exposed skin of his back, he can feel the cold rain hitting his skin. Compared to the soft, dry feel of the couch, it's a sensory overload. Hair - long and soft - is splayed over his shoulders.

He's not in his own body.

Those are the worst ones; there's nothing he can do but watch as his head takes another hapless victim, and then he has to wake up and see them the next day, or hear their voice, or hear of them. The guilt that comes with it is unbearable, though he's not sure why - it's just a dream, after all. A nightmare. He never did anything. But sometimes he can't help but think, _I killed you inside my own head. I was there with you while you died. I heard you screaming and begging for mercy. I don't even remember what killed you, because I didn't try hard enough to._

There's a rough sound to Dipper's right - but he can't look. It's not his body to look with.

It's rough, a half-bleat, half-roar, like the T-Rex from _Jurassic Park_ was swallowing an angry deer whole. It's deep, horrid, and dissonant, rattling the bones of the body he's taking residence in with pure, unadulterated fear.

Dipper would flinch, wince, probably run if he could. But he can't. He can't save whoever's body this is; he _never_ can. That's what keeps his hands shaking in the dark of night, that heavy, crippling helplessness, long after the nightmare and its memory are gone.

There's a scraping noise against the concrete - hooves. Don't underestimate something that moves on hooves. Never underestimate the things that come along in dreams.

There's a snuff to his right, close enough to blow hot, rotten breath against his face. Dipper internally gags. Really, is it too much to ask for a monster to brush its teeth?

Fear blooms in Dipper's chest. He can't see it, he can't do anything, and this person is going to die. He doesn't know who he is in relation to this girl - enemy, friend, whatever - but he's sure he probably doesn't want her to die. And he doesn't want to feel her dying, anyway.

The girl stirs - she must have been knocked unconscious somehow. Her breath hitches. Her arms are in motion, trying to push herself up and away as fast as possible -

the beast's paw clamps down on her leg, and Dipper gets his first look at it. His stomach does somersaults.

It looks like someone took a bear's paw and stretched it into human proportions. It's distinctly wide, the fingers had a bearish look, but were mobile, like a person's. It had a terrible Frankenstein look that made Dipper want to abandon any and all curiosity and run, run, run. The worst part, though, were the razor-sharp claws, shiny and black and pulling thin rivulets of blood from her skin. One paw is enough to spread over and around both of her ankles with ease.

The girl screams and tries to pull away. Dipper knows it's a bad move before it even becomes one, because the monster's claws just dig in deeper, the wicked curves catching in bone.

Her back bumps into the beast's other paw.

She knows she's doomed. After hearing the monster's hungry growl, Dipper knows she's worse than doomed.

The girl hazards a glance up. She's shaking, she's sobbing, she knows she's not making it out of this alive, but she at least wants the small justice of knowing what her murderer looked like. Dipper can appreciate the sentiment, but they both could've dealt without the image rattling in their heads.

The beast has the face of a deer, big, fluffy ears and all - but it's head is stretched over the skull of an alligator's, complete with yellow, razor-edge teeth popping out of its ghastly maw. Crowning its head are a pair of enlarged Pronghorn-esque horns, shiny and obsidian. There's a massive scar over its left eye, but the eye wasn't missing, just pearl-white and completely blind.

 _Must be one hell of story_ , Dipper thinks.

The other eye - shaped like that of a bobcat's - is what gets him. Instead of being demon red, or Bill yellow, or ice blue, it's warm and green. The brightest, most intense shade of forest green he's ever seen in his life, in fact.

A strand of spit smacks the girl in the cheek, and she screams. _Me too,_ Dipper thinks.

She tries to scramble away, but the beast just shifts its weight, pressing against her legs - specifically, her ankles. _It's playing,_ Dipper thinks. _It's playing with its food._

Her ankles snap under the pressure, and Dipper feels her pain with her this time; it blazes through her body like lightning that doesn't ever stop - he'd scream if he had his own set of lungs, but for now, he's just an extra passenger.

The beast lifts up its right paw, and the girl falls back against the ground, sobbing and crying. Dipper wants to do just about the same.

The monster moves lithely, removing its paw from her leg and backing away, opting to circle around her in a strange, waltz-like stalk. Its back paws are the split hooves of a bison, the legs stretched and elongated. _Massive stride,_ Dipper notes. _More like a bound. Jumping capabilities are probably out of this fucking world._

The beast isn't bulging with muscle, either - it's thin. Wisp thin. Dipper doesn't know where the power to compound fracture both of this girl's ankles came from; it's made of bone and thick, fluffy fur that most likely hides most of its wasted body.

The beast - which had been curled over its midsection - straightens, and Dipper wants to hurl.

Instead of having skin, the monster's rib cage is completely open to the world, but there are absolutely no organs in its chest cavity. Its spinal cord - which was overly-long - wound down, meeting the beast's pelvis where bison fur sprung up and covered the top half of its back legs. There was nothing. A gaping, black void - if Dipper focused, he might have realized that the darkness was just taut, dark skin, pulled tight under its bones like a circus tent.

Now that he noticed, it seemed its entire spinal cord was left in the open, balancing against its back instead of inside it.

The girl is howling, now, as the monster prowls around her. Dipper doesn't blame her. Seeing bone jut through the surface of skin is never easy; twice in the same night? Sickening.

It prowls in such a fashion that its eye never leaves her face, side-stepping with a strange, fluid grace.

It's disorienting, it's horrifying, and Dipper wishes the girl would look away so he could un-see it. So he never, ever has to look upon whatever the fuck this is again. But she won't.

Dipper notices another odd feature. Between its vertebrae there were small spines shaped like different kinds of shark teeth popping out and snapping to and fro with its movement. It's horrifying, somehow. It doesn't help that the shoulders are shaped like a humans, that the arms - thin, of course - move like a person's. It gives the vibe of human experimentation gone wrong.

"Just do it!" the girl screams. Dipper's blood runs cold - he knows that voice.

It's Melanie, Melanie Wright, the asshole who tortures his sister for fun. Dipper can't stop the stab of vindictive glee that bursts in his chest. He wonders if that makes him a bad person.

He doesn't have a lot of time to think on it, though; the monster complies, leaping forward and cracking Melanie's pelvis with the force of the jump, and then it leaps back, continuing its prowling dance. Like it hadn't just split her pelvis like a damn saltine cracker in ten seconds flat. The crack, loud and final, wreathes about Dipper's mind as if it were a plague.

 _Holy shit,_ Dipper thinks. _Is it playing?_

Melanie is screeching, back arching against the ground. Dipper feels his glee from earlier falter, but not much - he's no longer sympathizing with her. He just wants her to die already. Being an uninvited passenger in her body is incredibly painful, even diluted through the dream.

The monster bounds to her side, suddenly, jolting them both. It looks at her, big green eye narrowing. Calculating. The thing is figuring her out, mapping the complexities of her anatomy with the barest glance of a single eye. The realization dawns over Dipper like a bucket of cold water; it's not playing. It's finding out its place in the food chain. It's waiting for Melanie to grow spikes or spit posion - it doesn't know that people are utterly defenseless without weapons. This monster isn't a sadistic maniac; it's an animal. It's hunting.

The beast hisses, like an alligator. In a flash, its massive paw comes swinging down and smacks Melanie's broken pelvis with enough force to break it again. To that thing, it's probably just batting at her weaknesses; it's overestimating how strong she is. It doesn't even know it's breaking bones. It could be playing, for all Dipper knows.

Melanie's scream is horrifying.

 _Oh, God,_ Dipper thinks. _Just fucking kill her._

The monster seems to take orders well, because it comes to her knees and balances on them with its front paws, pressing, pressing, _pressing - snap._ The combination of the monster's paws wrapped around her knees and the impossible pressure being applied downward cracks something in her knee, but Melanie's all out of vocal cords to howl with.

The monster inches forward, balancing it's paws on her thighs. And then it pops up, suddenly, hitting her legs when it comes down - like CPR, but in the wrong area with way too much force being applied. Then it does it again. And again.

It does it until it can feel her femurs cracking. Dipper feels sick. Even dimmed, the pain is incredible - he can't imagine what it must be like to feel it firsthand.

Then it slips forward. It's so close that they can both feel it's hot breath, disgusting and vile, like something that's been asleep a very, very long time.

It rears back on its hindlegs, raising its head like a king. At its full height, it's several feet taller than Dipper is - and Dipper's pretty damn tall, honestly.

The monster leans down, parts its mouth, and roars.

The beast had been considerably quiet, preferring to listen to its victim's cries. But now, its bellow is ear-splitting and can be heard over the entire city, rising and dropping in pitch horrendously. Spit flies against Melanie's face. Whatever noise it had released earlier, this was ten times as bad; Dipper even feels a hot trickle of blood leaking from Melanie's ear. For something that lacked the space for proper lungs, it could produce a truly concussive sound.

Dipper's head swims. He can't even tell the monster has stopped bellowing until its claws dig into Melanie's sides and _tear_ , turning her flesh into four long fillets of human meat. Dipper mentally gags.

When Melanie's hurriedly blackening vision looks up at the Beast, strings of flesh and spit are swinging from its maw. It looks right, in a way, like this is how the creature belongs.

The monster snaps open its jaw, and slams it shut against Melanie's head.

Dipper wakes up.

There's something on top of him - _oh God, oh God, no_ \- so he shoves it off. Dipper stumbles up, nearly crashing into the coffee table, and staggers towards the bathroom, where he promptly heaves into the toilet.

After a couple minutes, someone comes in after him, bare feet slapping against the tiles hard. He flinches.

"It's just me," Mabel murmurs.

Dipper lets out a breath. Oh, shit. "Sorry," he says. His voice comes out hoarse and wet. "I kinda… pushed you off the couch."

"It's okay," Mabel says.

Dipper stands up, shaky. There's a dull ache pounding against his legs, his skull feels like it's splitting in two, and there's sharp needle-pricks poking his sides; he can't quite remember why. He must have been sleeping weird.

Mabel turns on the light, and Dipper winces. She immediately flicks the switch back down. "Migraine?"

Dipper shrugs. His mouth feels like cotton, and he doesn't trust it to speak.

Mabel wraps an arm around his shoulder. "Let's get you to bed, dweebsters."

Dipper nods, numbly. He can't remember much of his dreams, usually, just bits and pieces; but he remembers Melanie Wright's scream, deafening, and a bright green eye, blinding.

It's disorienting.

Mabel grabs his arm and wraps it around her neck while he looks on, dumbly. She presses her shoulder against his and helps him hobble to the stairs, pins and needles and knives shooting up his legs and settling in his hips.

"I think my knee caught your hip when you woke up," Mabel says. "Must've hit you pretty hard."

Dipper swallows, opens his mouth to speak and apologize, but then snaps it shut when the words fly out of his head.

Mabel notices and giggles. "Dorkus," she says.

Dipper lets out a dry chuckle with her. He feels emptied out like an old, creaky house, with open windows to let in frigid drafts and holes in the floorboards that trip up the casual visitor. He feels haunted.

Ascending the stairs pops the kinks in Dipper's bones out, and he's moving on his own by the time they reach the top. Mabel bids him goodnight, Dipper returns to the favor, and he slips into his room quieter than a mouse.

Just inside of the door, he slumps. If he listens, he can hear Mabel bustling about in her room, preparing to go back to sleep. He can hear his father's deep, drunken snores from the room down the hall. He can hear his own raspy breathing, labored, like he'd been running.

He's tired. He's never slept well, but since his mother's death, he's been living on copious amounts of caffeine. It's not healthy, he knows, but he can't really help it. He should be sleeping, right now. He should _want_ to sleep like any other teenager would.

Dipper flicks on his bedside lamp. The soft, orange glow is impossible to see with his door shut.

It illuminates his cork board - covered in print-outs, rubber bands, and notes. In the center is a photo of his mother; smiling, grinning. Lively.

Dipper flops into his desk chair, staring at the picture. Her skin is tan and dark, her hair is shoulder-length and dark brown, like chocolate. Her eyes are warm and gold, the corners of her eyes crinkled in a smile. Her lips are drawn tight over pearly white teeth. Her cheeks are full and tinted with a rosy blush.

She's beautiful. There's a bend in her nose where she broke it, the tendons in her hand popped out too much, and one of her front teeth was crooked, but she was beautiful.

He remembers her hands. She'd set them on his head when he was little, her lithe, worked fingers carding through his hair. When he got to be her height, she'd settle them on the back of his neck, twisting the curls at the nape of his neck. When he was finally, finally taller than she was, her hand would settle at the small of his back, rubbing circles into his skin.

Dipper can feel the ghost of her touch, of her hugs, her soft voice that got screechy when she was angry, he can still sense her thin but strong form in the hallways of the house.

He liked it when Grunkle Stan had been here. His personality and his broad shoulders swallowed up the emptiness his mother had left in their house. Dipper found himself missing him, missing his cackles and the way he complained about his aging bones.

Grunkle Stan had fondly spoken of Wendy and Soos. It had hurt to hear, but he couldn't stop listening; he found himself wondering how they were, beyond what words could convey. He wondered how they dressed, how they spoke, the little mannerisms of theirs that had evolved and changed since he'd seen them so long ago. He wanted to laugh with them and do dumb, stupid things and be an actual friend to them. It was a powerful craving.

Dipper sighs, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees stars. He's moping and he knows it. It's something he's been doing a lot lately, sitting and staring and not really doing much.

It's been a week and a day, and he's so exhausted he doesn't even think he could sleep. His heart's tired of pushing and his head's tired of thinking. Breathing takes more effort than he has left in him.

He rests his head against the lukewarm wood and focuses on breathing. It should be easy, what with millions of years of instinct behind it. It just gets harder the more he tries.

He looks back at the cork board - the ancient runes scrawled on yellowing sheets of paper that frame his mother's picture. It feels like betrayal. He shouldn't be doing this. It's too late for him - he knows he owes Bill Cipher anything he wants, he knows Bill can come and take it whenever, can do whatever, he knows. He's dreamed of it. He's always looking over his shoulder, he's always mapping emergency exits in every room he walks into. He's damned no matter what corner of the world he runs to. He's learned to live with it. He knows his time is sooner rather than later.

But when he dies, Mabel's in the crossfire. He can't leave animosity behind him. He can't give people reason to want revenge over him. He can't give the things in the dark something to track, he can't leave a trail of thorns behind him because Mabel has to walk through it.

That means he can't get involved in the supernatural anymore. He'll leave a scent to follow and Mabel would have to deal with it. There's a time coming where he won't be able to protect Mabel, a bad moon rising just around the river's bend; and he has to be ready for it.

But his mother's dead. If it's Bill's fault, it's in violation of their deal. He could get justice. He could void his deal - he could be there for Mabel past the river's bend.

Dipper wrings his hands and glances at the clock; four thirty-four.

He cracks open his laptop and begins to work.

 **A/N: That was needlessly dramatic, probably. Anyway! [claps hands together] If you guys want to keep seeing this update, speak up! Questions, comments, concerns, whatnot - I accept love letters - should be sent below or to my tumblr or to my AO3, I'm not exactly picky. You can find me at .com. I say this in every author's note. Every. Single. One. There should be no surprises here.**

 **But, just to give it some swing, I dare you guys to guess what Dipper's internet history looks like after this night! ;) Let's get wacky, guys!**


	6. UXQ UXQ UXQ ZLWK WKH UDLOURDG ZKHQ WKHLU

**A/N: Wait, what's this? I'm updating? That's strange. :D Here we go! Remember: all gore trigger warnings, suicide mentions, and bullying triggers apply in EVERY chapter. Be safe!**

"I'm gonna tell him tonight," Mabel says, sweeping mascara over her eyelashes. "I'll tell him about Mom. It's gonna be okay. He'll tell me what to do."

Mabel leans back, inspecting her work. Not her best mascara job ever, but judging by how exhausted she is, it'll do.

She hadn't really slept until midnight last night, and on top of that, Dipper had woken her up at four in the morning. She didn't mind too much; his nightmares were horrible, to be honest, and she'd gotten used to his late-night terrors over the years.

"Who are you talking to?" Dipper shouts, from the bathroom he shares with their father. There were two bathrooms in the Pines home - one for girls, one for guys. They really only used separate rooms because Mabel took long showers, though. (So did Mom, but that doesn't matter anymore, did it?)

"No one!" Mabel shouts, quickly. "Just, um, talking to myself! Getting ready for the day, right?"

She sticks her head out of the door, hair swinging below her, at the same time Dipper does. He's making that super-serious-intense-frowny-face, the one he uses when people say things he finds unsettling.

It'd be kind of intimidating if his toothbrush wasn't sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Coupled with his bedhead, the red lines imprinted on his face, and his morning scruff, it's laughter-worthy.

"Mmf - you thure?" he gurgles around the toothbrush.

Mabel giggles. "You are _sooooo_ lucky that I don't have my phone right now."

Dipper's eyes narrow and his brows raise, giving him an even more comical look. "I happen to have the 'rugged' look going for me, thank you." He puts air quotes around the word 'rugged,' making Mabel chortle.

"You have _no_ look going for you, trust me. I am a professional," Mabel says.

"Oh, _oh?_ Oh, really? You know what, I think I just won't shave today -"

"No!" Mabel squeals. "You know I hate that!"

Dipper grins. "Yeah, not feelin' it."

"Dipper!" Mabel whines. "I won't hug you for the entire day. The whole day. No hugs. Not even touching you. You know I hate the feel of scruff!"

"Eh, I'll just hug you first," Dipper says, and ducks back into his bathroom.

"No!" Mabel begs. "Please! It rubs against my face when I hug you and it's like - it's like feeling the claws of _Satan_. Come on, Dip!"

"I can't hear you!" Dipper calls.

"Ass!" Mabel retorts.

"Language!" their dad yells from his room.

Mabel jumps, and then leans back out of the doorway. Dipper was facing her, a similar 'oh shit' expression on his face. They both break out into a fit of giggles.

"We're gonna be late," Dipper says, clicking on an iPhone to check the time. He immediately winces from the brightness - while he kept his devices on the lowest possible brightness, Mabel kept hers on the highest, preferring to annihilate her enemies with neon-colored backgrounds and a glaring cesspool of light.

"Hey!" Mabel shrieks. "That's my phone!"

Dipper sticks his tongue out at her. "Come and get it, then."

Mabel turns around to glance at the clock on her counter - seven forty-eight. She's still in her Ice Age pajamas. If she tackles Dipper now, she won't have time to lace her amazingly cute booties.

She sighs. Some sacrifices have to be made.

"After I finish getting ready," she says, wagging a finger at him, "You're so getting it."

"You're gonna beat me with pillows anyway," Dipper says.

"More like with my fists," she strikes a Wonder Woman pose, rolling her fists like an old-fashioned boxer. "I'm gonna, like. Screw your face up."

"Children," their dad moans.

They both shot bolt upright. "Sorry," Dipper says, rubbing the back of his neck.

Mabel snatches a stray pillow outside of her door - really, they needed to clean the house soon - and slaps him with it. "I win!"

Dipper topples into the wall with a thud. "Ow!"

Mabel giggles. "Dorkasaurus."

"That's it!" Dipper launches forward and tackles her, and they crash to the floor with a bang. She knees him in the gut and he pins her legs with his knees, planting a forearm over her chest so that she's too occupied with breathing to knock him off.

"Don't you - ahhh!" Mabel shrieks and bucks as Dipper's hands brush the crook of her neck.

Their father slaps the wall. "It'd be easier if we didn't have to do this every day!"  
Mabel and Dipper stop. "Sorry, Dad," they chime.

"Now get ready!" he shouts.

Dipper scrambles up and offers his hand to Mabel, who takes it gratefully. His hands are warm, she notes. They always are. She wonders if it's a Dipper Thing, like all Dippers are factory programmed to have warm hands and obsessive tendencies.

"Right," Dipper says, brushing dust off of his clothes. "You ready?"

Mabel glances down to her pajamas with a raised eyebrow. _Of course, Dipper, I'm going to wear my Ice Age pajamas with woolly mammoths on the butt. Yes, obviously,_ she thinks.

Dipper blushes. "Don't judge me."

"Doctor Dweeb-a-lot," Mabel teases.

"Those never get any more gratifying," Dipper mutters.

"I'm out." Mabel scrambles into her room, dancing through the clutter to try and find the clothes she'd set out last night.

"Yeah, put some clothes on," Dipper says. "So indecent. Gosh."

"You only wear boxers to bed!" Mabel calls, slipping on a shirt without really looking at it. She'd given up finding her planned outfit. It's probably under her fabric store, anyway. "Only boxers, Dipper! I have been traumatized!"

"I find that insensitive!"

Mabel wriggles into her jeans and slips on her boots, fingers flying with the laces. "Get the car started!"

"Yay, I'm driving today," Dipper says, thundering down the stairs. "No near death experiences!"

"I'm not that bad!"

"Three tickets, Mabel!"

Mabel ignores his last comment and springs into the bathroom, snatching her perfume and spritzing herself with it a couple times. She glances into the mirror for a final check, and -

stumbles against the door, breathing hard and fast, so fast her lungs feel like they're going to pop like little tiny balloons.

"M-mom," she stammers.

"Hi," Marcella replies.

The door swings shut, completely of its own accord. Mabel flinches.

"Don't want anyone listening in," Marcella says. It's almost like she's staring at her mother again; if Mabel could ignore the slight glow, the floating, the sweep of her shoulder-length hair as if they were underwater. But she can't. That's the problem, isn't it? The crux of her issue.

She latches on to something else - _anything_ else.

"What are you doing here?" Mabel breathes. "Ghosts - ghosts haunt a single area. This is impossible."

"I died here, remember?"

Mabel's breath stalls. Dipper had never told her which bathroom her mother had... _died_ in.

He'd screamed at her to call the police, and she'd complied, because Dipper would only shout that when he was serious - would only shout _like_ that if it was serious. He'd come down a couple minutes later, soaked to the bone with blood and he was shaking, he was crying. It looked like someone had replaced his bones with gelatin.

It had looked like he'd just murdered someone on accident.

But he'd never told her which bathroom she'd killed herself in. Mabel has to fight the sudden, vicious anger that consumes her - didn't she have the right to know where her mother had -

Marcella's gaze morphs into one of pity. "Honey, I'm -"

"Please, please, Mom - I need you to move on," Mabel whispers. "I need you to leave me alone."

"I can't, you -"

"Stop," Mabel says. "Just -"

"Meet me at the cemetery," Marcella snaps, suddenly. Mabel jumps; the power in her voice is palpable. "Six o'clock. Don't be late."

Her image dissipates, like Mabel's good mood.

Mabel holds a hand to her mouth and presses it against her teeth, feeling her lips curl around the bone. Think later. Get to school now.

She ducks into the car, breathing hard - but not from rushing.

Dipper shoots her a wry grin - it looks out of place, from her perspective. She forgets that Dipper doesn't know everything, sometimes; he's always so concerned about her that he makes it a point to investigate every threat to her, like she's a precious, priceless crowning jewel.

He knows so much about her. He's always been there through the thick of things; the fact that he doesn't know anything, not this time, leaves her stumbling blind. There's an empty space beside her with his name on it, but he doesn't know that.

"Whew," she huffs, letting her emotions fly away with her breath. She'll handle everything later. Right now, she just wants to listen to shitty pop music; and Dipper's always happy to indulge her on that front.

Dipper pulls out of the drive, and they're off.

They're halfway down the road when _it_ comes on. There's a long story behind this particular song, one filled with bad singing and getting stuck in elevators; it's one of the multitude of things that they share solely between themselves.

It's a sweet memory, but she just wished Dipper didn't insist on singing it at the highest possible volume every time he heard it.

Dipper looks at her, eyes wide. She glares back. "Don't you frickin' do it, bromeo."

Dipper's face splits into a smile. "I have to. I'm required. It's the law."

Mabel prepares to protest -

" _IT'S MORE THAN A FEELING -"_

Mabel covers her ears, trying to blot out her brother's incoherent screeching. "You're butchering Boston!"

Dipper winks at her and continues to "sing."

 _That's good old Dipper,_ Mabel thinks. _Always ready to be the most annoying, lovable, dorkiest brother ever._

School goes about as well as Dipper expected. Mabel can't say she expected things to be bad - she's a proud optimist. Dipper's the pessimist of the two of them. Saying school went how Dipper expected it is like saying a homicidal alien dinosaur with lazer guns committed the genocide of the tri-state area; it's a worst case scenario.

People stare at her. They whisper. Apparently, Jenny Wilders - whose mother ran the towing service - had spilled about how her car had been vandalized. People loudly gave their unwanted opinions, obnoxiously smacking their lips together after every word, creating a cacophony of bitter snideness that licks over her open wounds like a fire.

It's times like these that she's incredibly glad that Dipper comes with a personal attack dog feature.

He's always looming in front of her, parting the crowd with the intensity of his glare alone. His left arm is always near her, always around her shoulders, always very protective and loving. Sometimes, Mabel hates it and wishes Dipper didn't care about her so much. Right now, she's taking advantage of it.

He shoots the whispers down with a glance, he shoves into the people that stare, he squares his shoulders when people try to say, "hey, watch it!" He snaps at people who make it through the sentence, using as little words as possible but pumping enough acid into them to melt skin. He's a personal spitfire, bile and hate, all for her.

It's not that Mabel can't defend herself, of course. She can - she's always been able to. She can take it.

It's just that Dipper won't let her, because he always sweeps in like an unholy fire, bowling over all adversaries with his sheer force of will. It used to annoy her; she'd argue with him frequently about it, and Dipper would give her this Dipper-y shrug that frustrated her.

It took her a while to understand that it's just the way he shows his love for people; to vehemently protect them with everything he has. Mabel has since gained a grudging appreciation for Attack-Dog Dipper.

But he freezes when they cross paths with Melanie Wright before fourth block - Dipper had insisted on walking her there, like a dumb, dorky brother would - and Mabel immediately knows that there's going to be trouble.

Curiously, Dipper's the first one to hesitate. He halts like a startled horse, backing up before moving forward, shoulders tensing. Mabel wishes she could see the myriad of emotions that most likely crossed his face.

Melanie Wright is nothing if not an opportunist, and she takes Dipper's hesitation as an opening. "The witch made it in."

The two cronies behind her shake their heads, back away. It's Marco and Giani - Mabel, with a burst of happiness, thinks that they must have learned better. The two of them scurry into the Cosmetics classroom as rats would to a meal.

Dipper's in action before she is, moving forward and tensing up like a cat about to pounce. She snatches his wrist and hisses, "Stop," through her teeth.

 _Cool it,_ Rocket, Mabel thinks.

Melanie has the decency - or self-preservation - to look wary. But it's for naught, as she presses on. "So you made your brother into your personal bitch, huh?"

Melanie, for a minute, looks shocked that she said it. Horrified, even. But then her face shutters closed, like a program fading to black. Mabel feels her curiosity - and her sympathy - brew.

Dipper growls. Actually growls, as if he were a dog prepared to attack, some animal in the dark waiting to snap its jaws shut over the skull of its prey. He pulls against her hand, saying, "Oh, fuck you, if you think I'm -"

"Dipper!" Mabel snaps. "Chill pill, broski."

Dipper glares at her. _Let me waste her._

Mabel shakes her head. _That's ridiculous._

Melanie stares at Mabel. "You did, didn't you? Turned your brother into your bitch. Your little guardian. That's pathetic. That's low, even for you."

Dipper wrenches his wrist out of her hand, rearing forward and pulling his arm back to -

Mabel slams into his shoulder, throwing him off course. Being around Dipper's height in this scenario is very useful, actually - if she were any smaller, Mabel's sure he would've batted her away.

Once he regains his balance, Mabel grabs him by the shirt. "You're going to get expelled."

If the look Dipper levels at her is mutinous, it turns singularly vicious when he looks a Melanie. She looks rightly terrified. From past experience, Mabel knows that Dipper can really, really beat the shit out of someone if Mabel's involved, muscles notwithstanding. He's got the temper to fuck people up.

"Freak," Melanie spits, and then she's sauntering away from the Cosmetics room, red hair swinging as she all but bolts down the hall. _Good move,_ Mabel thinks.

For a second, Dipper coils, ready to follow her. Grab her hair, maybe, and use it to knock her around a little. Dipper's temper is quite the thing to behold, in all honesty; she can barely remember the days when he was twelve and generally mild-mannered.

Dipper snorts, wheeling around like he was still looking for a fight. Mabel slaps his arm.

He jumps, grabbing his shoulder like it had actually hurt. "What was that for?"

"What was that for? _What was that for?_ " Mabel imitates. "What the hell was that, Dip?"

Dipper's eyebrows furrow. "That?" he gestures vaguely to the area where Melanie had been standing.

Mabel throws out her arm. "Yes, that!"

Dipper's lip curls. "It was nothing. Literally, nothing. Her ass remains unkicked."

She pokes his chest. "And it better stay that way! You can't threaten everyone, Dippy-dabble-doo."

"Dippy-dabble-doo?" Dipper's nose scrunches. "The fuck does that even mean?"

"You're missing the point!" Mabel groans. "Look, Dipper, I appreciate the overprotective shtick -"

"I am _not_ overprotective -"

"You just threatened to kick a defenseless girl's tooshie for me!" Mabel flails her arms, incredulous.

Dipper shakes his head. "That's normal."

Mabel facepalms. "No, no, Sweet n' Sour, it's not."

"Do your nicknames get better?"

"They get _helluva_ good, Dip," Mabel says. "And, just? Lay off with the, I'll-break-into-your-room-and-murder-you-with-a-tie-game. Tone it down."

Dipper blinks. "Okay, firstly, that's actually a good pun, so kudos to you. And, secondly, I do not say that."

"You look psychopathic enough to!" Mabel exclaims. "The scruff doesn't help! It makes it look like you've been too busy skinning small children to shave!"

Dipper makes a face, but his stomach takes it as a cue to voice its need for food. Mabel rolls her eyes.

"Please?" Mabel begs. "For me? Try to be more civil? And, jeeze, get some lunch while you're at it."

Dipper sighs, looking towards the ceiling. "To a degree, fine."

"Is that all I'm gonna get?"

"Yes," Dipper replies.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" Mabel shrieks, throwing her arms around his neck in a flurry. The two of them stumble into the wall, Dipper cracking his head on the cement.

"Gah!" he moans. "What is with the throwing me into hard objects?"

Mabel waves her hand. "You'll be fine. Now get! You're already late for class!"

"Fine, fine," Dipper mutters.

Mabel hurries into the Cosmetics room as the bell rings.

The class passes pleasantly, without Melanie there to darken the doorstep. Mabel, in the back of her mind, wonders where she got off to.

The night is bleak. It's the kind of darkness that the old songs bespeak; like the Devil's spread his wings and shadow has fallen upon the ground. Everything is restless, on the cusp of a great decision that nobody really knows anything about.

The air is thin and slips through lungs and leaves too easy, too quickly, as if the air particles themselves were running from something.

Mabel can't help but think that this is a very bad idea. Emphasis on bad. It's a no-good, downtrodden rotten idea, but she can't seem to get that through her own thick skull.

There's something about family that'll do that to a person.

Marcella's already waiting, in all her deathly, unnatural glory. She has the stance that tells Mabel that she would be pacing if ghosts could abide by the laws of gravity.

"Hello," she greets.

"This is it," Mabel says. "Either you convince me here, or you don't convince me at all. I'm leaving this shit behind."

"Language," Marcella murmurs.

"Whatever," Mabel huffs.

"A seat, perhaps?" Marcella asks, flicking one delicate hand - her mother's hands were never delicate - to the rickety bench to Mabel's left, shadowed by a dead willow tree.

The offer is an order if she'd ever heard one. Mabel was never one to disobey her mother, so she does as she's told.

Marcella turns to face her, everything about her being swirling like a big princess gown as she did so. "How was your day?"

Mabel's caught unprepared for the question. It's something so painfully normal, so painfully Mom, that she hadn't dared to entertain an answer.

"Good," Mabel says. "Cosmetics especially. We had brownies in lunch."

Marcella smiles warmly, but with a generous touch of wistfulness. "And Dipper?"

Mabel shrugs. "I can't answer that, silly. I'm not Dipper."

Marcella nods, swallowing. It's far too human of thing to do. She's a ghost, after all.

Mabel suspects her mother was going out of her way to seem natural, and in the process just dug her grave even deeper.

She wants to say something nice, say something she would've back in October, or September, or July, or five years ago. Instead, she blurts, "What are you going to do?"

"I thought," Marcella says, twiddling her thumbs, "that we could sit. And talk. And, maybe, listen."

It's a heavy statement, perfectly worded - just what Mom would say.

"Okay," Mabel says. She's surprised to find that she is okay with it. She honestly doesn't mind having a completely normal, perfectly natural conversation with her mother's ghost. "So, ah. What's the afterlife like?"

 _That's a really, really dumb question,_ Mabel thinks.

Marcella gives her a wan smile. "Strange. I see the world like - oh, hang it all, how to explain... Hm. If existence is a parade, then everything alive -" she gestures to Mabel, "-is watching from the sidelines. I'm in the helicopter that's reporting it to the news stations. If there's a bump, a crash, something in the way, I can see it. But you can't."

Mabel nods, prompting her mother to continue.

"It's a perception change, really," Marcella explains. "Seeing through a new lens_ - it changes the things you think you know. Honey, I know I'm your mother, and you want to believe I'm always in control, that I always know what I'm doing. But... I don't. I'm flying blind, just like you."

Mabel offers her a watery smile - a peaceoffering. "Well, flying blind together is the best way to fly blind."

Marcella gives a quick, terse laugh. "Perhaps, sweetflower. It's a way to stay together, isn't it?"

"... Mom, you know - you know me and Dipper got into the supernatural biz a lot. As kids, I mean -"

"I know perfectly well," Marcella interjects. "And I'll need your previous experience."

"Don't you think this is... dangerous?" Mabel asks, hopefully.

"Yes," Marcella says. "A necessary evil."

Mabel sighs. The two of them fall into a meaningful silence, each contemplative. Mabel can't shake the feeling that everything is waiting on one something, even Marcella. It makes her feel distinctly out of place, like that one rock that sticks up in a river, the water rushing and spilling about it.

She takes the oppurtunity to think.

Her mother would not lie to her. Her mother would not betray her, her mother would not abuse her trust, her mother would not do something unjustly; if Marcella Pines was anything, it was honorable. Marcella upheld certain values that made her personality swell, like the puffed chest of a lion. She was hardworking, she was loyal, she was prideful and venerable.

They were all traits that had made her mother seem larger than life, stronger than an ox, with more endurance than a wolf. Mabel's mother, though she lived a domestic life, had the air of a heroine. She always handled hurdles with the idea that she'd already faced the worst.

Mabel had viewed her mom with something like hero-worship. Where her father was simple, and worked with computers, her mother had been a criminal investigator. Her mother was always this golden statue of goodness and power.

Whether she liked it or not, defying the laws of life and death to save people was very, very Marcella Pines. It was a special breed of tenacity that only Marcella could possess.

At the same time, Mabel wanted to believe that her mother would put her daughter's safety before everyone else's. That, maybe, she would prove to be as fiercely protective over Mabel's wellfare as Dipper was and leave it at this. Whatever this is.

"Ah," Marcella says, suddenly.

Mabel jumps. "What?"

"This is where we begin to listen."

And, somewhere off in the distance, a girl began to scream.

 **A/N: HAHHAHA WE'RE ON TO THE MURDER, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS. Question: now, who's getting murdered? ;) As always, review, comment, blahblahblah, I'm on tumblr at jerseydevious, all this author's noting is exhausting. Let the conspiracies commence! (And, trust me, literally every detail comes back up again, because I've spent many a countless hour writing and rewriting and planning until my eyes bleed. You're welcome. This is the fruit of unpaid labor, what you're reading.)**


	7. BRX'UH DOO VKHHS LQ D SHQ

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p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"strongA/N: I love everything. It's wonderful. Trigger warnings for mentions of violence, etc./strong/p  
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p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She jumps about seventeen feet in the air. "Dipper! You scared the life out of me!"/p  
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p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper, crouched over what looks like a walkie-talkie, flinches out of his reverie. "Mabel! What are you…" Dipper breaks off and yawns himself. "What are you doing? It's, like, three in the morning."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I needed some time," she says. The words are past her lips before she can think about what they mean; lying to Dipper is crossing a line neither of them have crossed since they were twelve, back in Gravity Falls./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"I should tell him now,/span Mabel thinks. span style="font-style: oblique;"He deserves to know. I need to stop lying to him./span/p  
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p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Oh," he says, a shade quieter than normal. Just a hair. Just a tiny bit less confident in his words than he was a minute ago./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She doesn't have the heart to tell him. She can imagine how that would go: span style="font-style: oblique;"hey, our deceased mother who committed suicide came back as a ghost to try and teach me blood magic because there's something out there that shrieks like the Devil and is killing people, how ya feelin' now, bro-bro?/span/p  
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p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It's a police scanner," Dipper says. "Someone got mauled. Really, really badly."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel's breath hitches. Now, span style="font-style: oblique;"now/span would be the perfect time to spill everything, now would be the time to stop lying. But she can't look Dipper in the eyes, so she bites her lip to keep her mouth shut./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper interprets the tension in her expression incorrectly, assumes it's because of the mauling, and continues, "It was Melanie Wright."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel's eyes snap to his face. She hadn't known that part - she'd just listened to the agonized howls of someone being batted around by a tiger. "What?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""They identified her an hour ago," Dipper says./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel runs a hand through her tangled, messy hair. "Wow."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"They're silent. It's awkward, because they usually have no problems talking about dark stuff with each other; but that's about what goes on in their heads, usually. An outright murder hits too close to Gravity Falls for comfort, and they've never even tried to talk about how they feel about span style="font-style: oblique;"that/spanone./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Y'know, uh, Mabel," Dipper says, throat scratchy. She's momentarily taken by how deep his voice can get; when she thinks of Dipper, she usually thinks of him as he was when he was twelve, when she nearly lost him. She can't seem to forget the image of it. "Just in case this isn't a one-off murder, you should… not. Uh, stay out this late, for, a little bit. Just to be safe."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel blinks. Something inside her - the independent teenager corner of her brain, probably - bristles at the idea of being told what to do, especially by her own twin, who has a bad habit of giving advice he doesn't take himself. Maybe, at one time, she would've gotten pissed at him for it./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"But Dipper's working his throat, and the muscles in his jaw are twitching, and she'd recognize those wide cow eyes anywhere, and his voice was quavering; he was scared. And it made sense, especially coming from Dipper, who had a habit of working himself into all sorts of tizzies over all sorts of things./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"It also made sense coming from a teenager who'd lost his mom a week and a half ago and wasn't ready to lose anyone else./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"So Mabel swallows her bristly pride, and remembers that the best way to deal with Dipper's anxiety is to indulge his idea of safety./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Pfft," Mabel says. "I can fight off twenty pirates. I'm in a whole new league. You, Dippin' Dots, need to watch out. You can only fight of a half of a skeleton." She winks at him to finish the effect with a flourish. "But, if I have to, I'll abide by your curfew, bossy. As long as you do, too!"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"It works; Dipper's shoulders slump like she'd untied a threaded knot between them. Mabel Pines is a confirmed Good Sister once more./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper chuckles. "I can fight off a whole skeleton, thank you. Maybe even two skeletons. I totally have biceps."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel forms her fingers into a pair of goggles and puts them over her eyes. "Puttin' on these skepticals, bro."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Oh, you asshole," Dipper says, without any real feeling. "You want some hot chocolate?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It's only four in the morning," Mabel shrugs. "Why not?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It's always hot chocolate time," Dipper says, and he stands up, wincing./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Oh, don't you dare think I didn't catch your pained facial expression," Mabel says, eyes narrowing. "What's up?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She bets it's his knee. His left eyebrow only does that twitching thing when it's his knee./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""My knee," Dipper mumbles, blushing./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Bingo./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"He really needs to stop getting embarrassed about that thing,/span Mabel thinks. span style="font-style: oblique;"Do I need to file this beneath Address Later or Screw It, It'll Get Better?/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Then I should make the hot chocolate," Mabel says, standing up. "Go lay down, I'll bring it to you."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Absolutely not."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel raises her fists, and rolls them like she's about to fight him, which she totally is. And she's going to win. "Fight me, loser. We never had that rematch, we can do it right here, right now."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper puts up his fists in a similar position. "I'll kick your ass. I'll do it."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I'm making the hot chocolate," Mabel insists, throwing a fake jab at his shoulder./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper makes a good show of pretending that it actually hit him, a comically pained expression sliding over his features. "Screw you, I'm going to be a good brother and bring you the hot chocolate."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""But I'm going to bring it to span style="font-style: oblique;"you."/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""But you've been out all night! You're freezing! As the official doctor, I'm prescribing you a blanket, bed, and your Big Hero 6 pajamas. Go, go," Dipper says, ushering her to the stairs./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""But," Mabel complains. "Walking up the stairs is going to be hell for you!"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""And I have to do it anyway, so I better be doing it for a good reason," Dipper says./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Is sleep not a good enough reason?" she asks./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Sleep is for the weak," he says, and limps into the kitchen. It's almost painful to watch - actually, scratch that, it span style="font-style: oblique;"is/span painful to watch. When it does bother him, it's practically the bane of his existence./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Dipshit!" she calls./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Thank you!" Dipper responds./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel sighs. It's hard to take care of Dipper, because he forgets he needs caring for, too. The asshole./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper leans out of the doorway. "Go upstairs!"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Okay, okay! Bossypants!" she teases, and ascends the stairs. The warmth is slowly leaching back into her bones, but walking up the stairs still proves difficult, being as numb as she is./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"A picture on the wall catches her attention - the silver frame is gleaming in the moonlight, and she automatically knows which picture it is./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"It's the old family photo, the only one they took. They took it the Hanukkah before Gravity Falls happened./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She carefully unhooks the photo and holds it, reverently. Her fingers brush the cold glass./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Her mom looks a lot younger than the ghost of her does; there's less ancient knowledge behind her dark eyes, less lines around her eyes. Her dad looks less like he feels like he's dead inside, more like a Pines, broad shoulders bent straight and big green eyes wide like he just can't contain his excitement. They look good, happy, healthy. Her mom is the epitome of the Mariolos and her dad is the epitome of the Pineses, and it's perfect./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper looks shyer, less confident. He's not leaning towards her like he does these days. Mabel sometimes forgets about how Gravity Falls simultaneously tore them apart and brought them closer together, how they were twins who couldn't really stand each other and then they were closer than close gets. He looks like he doesn't quite get what he's doing there, and he probably doesn't./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel, herself, is grinning at the camera widely, sitting between her parents and pulling them closer together. She looks a lot less like the face Mabel sees in the mirror; younger, happier. Mabel wishes she could go back to then, to being young and carefree, no Gravity Falls and no ghosts haunting her bathroom./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"No monsters creeping around the city. No Melanie Wrights with their lives ended abruptly. No Melanie Wrights she could have saved./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She's crying before she knows what to do with herself; it's some byproduct of stress and grief, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of the guilt she's feeling for keeping Dipper in the dark./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She stumbles into her room, blindly, depositing the picture between her bed and her wall and listening to it bump against the floor with a crack. She doesn't care if it's broken - the people in it are broken, anyway, so what's the point of pretending?/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"At some point, she ends up on her bed, not really thinking besides the constant stream of span style="font-style: oblique;"why/span going through her head./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"She's dimly aware of being folded into a hug, being curled into someone else's warmth. She wishes - dear God, does she span style="font-style: oblique;"wish/span - that it was her mother. If she keeps her eyes shut for long enough, it'll be her mother when she opens them. In that moment, Mabel wishes she had the opportunity to deal with Bill Cipher just once, and she knows deep in her heart that she would trade anything to go back in time and stay there, forever. She would give span style="font-style: oblique;"anything./span She wants the person hugging her now to be her mother, her father, Grunkle Stan, all the people she can't have./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"But it's not, and it's never going to be, so her arms wrap around Dipper's waist and her hands grab fistfuls of the cotton at his shoulders and she cries her eyes out. They're loud, ugly sobs, and she's glad her father's car wasn't in the driveway when she got home because he would definitely not approve./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"When she's cried her fill, her left cheek is burning. "Damn it, Dipshit, your stupid scruff hurts. Why do guys get hair on their faces when they go through puberty? It's dumb. It's so dumb. Your face is dumb, Dipper."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"He does nothing more than chuckle against her shoulder. With her ear pressed against him, though, it sounds like a rumble, like those funky sounds elephants make./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It really is," she insists. "The epitome of dumb."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It's okay, Mabel," he mumbles, and he sounds so sincere that Mabel nearly starts sobbing all over again./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It's not, it's span style="font-style: oblique;"not./span It's really not. Why can't things go back to the way they were?" she whispers./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper presses her closer to him, like he's trying to put her back together with the sheer force of his will. "I'm sorry," he says. "But they can't."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Why not?" Mabel whines. She doesn't even feel bad for the snot she's getting on Dipper's shirt, in all honesty./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""'Cause... time's a single point. It's all about the moment we're in. The past doesn't exist in the past, it's brought to the present with us," Dipper says./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""...That was beautiful."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I quoted it from an article about the science of time," Dipper replies./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Oh my God, you nerd," Mabel chuckles. "That's so nerdy, I just. Oh my God."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper laughs. "It's true! And you did say it was beautiful."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""It was! I should've known you didn't come up with it yourself."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I worded it myself!"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""You didn't figure it out yourself!"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper releases her - he hugs like a bear - and looks at her with watery eyes crinkled in a smile. "But! That doesn't count. Absolutely not. Nope, notta, not even a little bit."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Yes, it does, it is a very valid point," Mabel says, poking his chest with a finger. "And you, mister, have the burden of proof. So do your proof-ing and prove it to me, nerd."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""But you were the one who had a problem with my - beautiful, by the way - speech, so you have to prove your point first," Dipper says./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Oh, you dipshit," Mabel says. "Absolute dipshit."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dipper sticks his tongue out at her, and then performs a complicated maneuver where he twists the top half of his body to reach behind him. (Mabel stifles a giggle. He looks like he's struggling.)/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"It takes him a minute, but Dipper resurfaces with a mug of - now lukewarm - hot chocolate./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel blinks. "I thought you made you one, too?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Uh, I came out to check the scanner and heard you crying, so I finished your hot chocolate so I'd have something to cheer you up with," Dipper says./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Mabel grins at him. "Aw, and the Grinch's heart grew."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Shut up!" he whines./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""We can share this one," she says, and offers Dipper the mug./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"He shakes his head. "No, it's yours -"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Just drink it," Mabel commands, and Dipper takes a sip from the, 'lol cats r cuter' mug./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"They take turns sipping hot chocolate and talking about the dumbest, most banal things until they both fall asleep./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"-/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"The thing about being tall, Mabel thinks, is that you can't cuddle with someone else who is also tall on a small bed without paying the price./span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"It's true. She's been subtly rubbing her neck through her first two blocks, and Dipper's been using the edge of his desk to massage a kink out of his forearm. It's the most interesting thing happening since MaKenna stole Mabel's paper and drew elephants on it, like she always did when she thought Mabel needed a pick-me-up./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"Earlier, she'd caught sight of the bags beneath Mabel's eyes back in first block, reached into her bag, and pulled out two canisters of coffee; without comment, Mabel had passed the black coffee to Dipper - who blushed and started thanking MaKenna profusely - and then taken the French Vanilla one./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"(Mabel's been best friends with MaKenna since the first day of high school, when Mabel had gushed about her elephant-print shirt and then they'd started gushing about animals. Having known Mabel that long, MaKenna had become well acquainted with Dipper, even though they weren't textbook-definition 'friends,' so she usually gave him a coffee fix, too.)/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"MaKenna's just finishing the curly swoop of the last elephant's tail when the announcement comes on; "As a lot of you have discovered, Miss Melanie Wright suffered a terrible fate last night."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"Murmurs spread throughout the room. Mabel feels her blood turn to ice; she can't help but think about the look on her mother's face as she sat, dead silent, and listened to Melanie get ripped apart, without doing anything to stop it./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"Mabel had screamed, cried, howled, but Marcella had never responded./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""A ceremony honoring her memory," the announcer continued, "Will be held in the auditorium at two thirty."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"Mabel swallows, hard./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""May-bae?" MaKenna asks. "You cool?"/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""I'm upset," she says./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""About Melanie?" MaKenna says. "Because there's nothing you could've done that could change things."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"If only she knew./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""You're right," Mabel says. She understands that, yeah, sure, Mabel couldn't have stopped the thing that tore through Melanie. It's not Mabel's fault. But she still regrets not trying harder, because she's the only living person in the whole wide world who knew what was going to happen, even if her warning came seconds before the act itself./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"Her eyes find Dipper's. His seat is directly across the room from hers, which has led to no less than eighty-three Facial Expression Brigades. Right now, he's giving her a thumbs up./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"She winks back at him, and turns to the board just as the teacher speaks up./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""I have no clue why in the name of all that is good and holy that they would wait this long to make an announcement," Ms. Redd complains. "But all is well! In the email, it says I am to dismiss you from my class at regular time, and from there you will meander on to the auditorium. So, you're not missing any work today, suckers!"/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"The class groans, and the clock starts to tick down to the time of the assembly./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"It doesn't take long enough for Mabel to get her bearings, and then the walk down doesn't take nearly long enough. By the time she sits down, firmly placed between Dipper and MaKenna - two vicious bulldogs in their own right - she's exhausted./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"They're quiet until the assembly begins./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"The principal wipes his eyes with a handkerchief before beginning. "Death, students, is a part of life. It happens to all of us - the worst of us, the best of us."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"The mumbles and whispers at the corners of the hall are snuffed out./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""Last night, a terrible tragedy fell upon us; Melanie Wright, senior, was murdered."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"The whispers come back with a vengeance./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""We have no idea who would have committed such an atrocity. If any of you - anyone at all - has any idea as to who would do such a thing, then, by all means, speak up. Tell me, an administrator, a teacher, call the police yourself if you must. But, do not stay silent. We want justice for Melanie's death, and we will have justice, but we need the help of all of you./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""A few individuals have asked to speak," the principal continued. "Please, give them your utmost respect."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"Mabel folds her hands in her lap, respectfully taking in each word they say. Marco speaks, and so does Giani, and then two other people Mabel doesn't recognize before Silas Nier steps up to the podium./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"She'd know those highlighter-yellow Lebrons anywhere. He's even wearing the same gross, stained gray hoodie he wore all through freshman year./span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"She only knows him because he used to pester Dipper for her number, and when Dipper proved to be a dead end, she started pestering everyone else Mabel knew before coming to her and outright asking if she wanted to have sex with him. (Dipper would've probably punched his lights out, but he wasn't tall and intimidating in freshman year - in fact, in freshman year, they were both incredibly tiny. So, Dipper resolved to make the guy's life a living hell until he quit. Mabel never asked what he did to make Silas go away, but it was extremely effective.)/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"She knows, for a fact, that Melanie Wright would never come within ten feet of Silas Nier. She used to chase Silas away from Mabel's heels all the time, in fact. So why was he speaking at a ceremony about her death?/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;" /span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"span style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;""Hey," Silas says. "I didn't know Melanie very well, but I do know that she was a beautiful person, with a beautiful soul. She had an effect, y'know, on people. She gave me courage, just by being who she was. And this? This, this is courage. You need the help of the people to find the killer, and I found the killer: Mabel Pines."/span/span/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"strongspan style="font-style: oblique;"span style="font-style: normal;"A/N: [pops popcorn] So, the readers on AO3 totally emroasted/em Silas, so I want to see if you guys are quite so... enthusiastic. ;) So start the fire pit, it's time to rag the fuck down on Silas!/span/span/strong/p  
/div 


	8. watch the color of the sun

**A/N: I bet you guys liked that last chapter... ;) That was an FFN-exclusive clue, there, since AO3 has so many clues. Enjoy trying to figure out what that one's about!**

Mabel stumbles through the front door around four in the morning, exhausted and cold. Her fingers are shaking, but she knows it's fruitless to try and stop them.

She yawns loudly as she strips off her jacket and throws the keys to the red pickup in the bowl; her eyes, watery from yawning, scan the room -

She jumps about seventeen feet in the air. "Dipper! You scared the life out of me!"

Dipper, crouched over what looks like a walkie-talkie, flinches out of his reverie. "Mabel! What are you…" Dipper breaks off and yawns himself. "What are you doing? It's, like, three in the morning."

"I needed some time," she says. The words are past her lips before she can think about what they mean; lying to Dipper is crossing a line neither of them have crossed since they were twelve, back in Gravity Falls.

I should tell him now, Mabel thinks. He deserves to know. I need to stop lying to him.

Through the moonlight filtering through the windows, Mabel can see the thick shadows beneath Dipper's eyes, the gauntness in his cheeks. His shoulders are hunched over the table, arms clinging around his middle, stuck in that contemplative pose Grunkle Stan used to take when his thoughts drifted to not-so-nice corners of his mind.

"Oh," he says, a shade quieter than normal. Just a hair. Just a tiny bit less confident in his words than he was a minute ago.

She doesn't have the heart to tell him. She can imagine how that would go: hey, our deceased mother who committed suicide came back as a ghost to try and teach me blood magic because there's something out there that shrieks like the Devil and is killing people, how ya feelin' now, bro-bro?

And then Dipper would respond in the way Dippers responded to things, all obsessive tendencies and late nights spent trying to take on something a lot stronger than he is. She gets a vivid image of her brother with his hands ground in dirt, blood running from his nose and his eyes are bent in hate. His left knee is shattered, and he won't ever walk the same way again, and his arm is broken and there's a massive laceration forever scarring his chest, but he's furious, and the demon cackling above him is about to know just how furious he can be.

Her fingers clench.

"What are you doing up, Dipster?" she asks, taking a seat beside him at the table. She hides her hands beneath it so he won't see the way they quake.

Dipper unwinds an arm from his lap, and - shakily, she notices - reaches for a walkie-talkie sitting on the table. He flicks it on.

Several static-ky voices jump out at her, clamoring for her attention. "Woah," Mabel says. "What is all that?"

"It's a police scanner," Dipper says. "Someone got mauled. Really, really badly."

Mabel's breath hitches. Now, now would be the perfect time to spill everything, now would be the time to stop lying. But she can't look Dipper in the eyes, so she bites her lip to keep her mouth shut.

Dipper interprets the tension in her expression incorrectly, assumes it's because of the mauling, and continues, "It was Melanie Wright."

Mabel's eyes snap to his face. She hadn't known that part - she'd just listened to the agonized howls of someone being batted around by a tiger. "What?"

"They identified her an hour ago," Dipper says.

Mabel runs a hand through her tangled, messy hair. "Wow."

They're silent. It's awkward, because they usually have no problems talking about dark stuff with each other; but that's about what goes on in their heads, usually. An outright murder hits too close to Gravity Falls for comfort, and they've never even tried to talk about how they feel about thatone.

"Y'know, uh, Mabel," Dipper says, throat scratchy. She's momentarily taken by how deep his voice can get; when she thinks of Dipper, she usually thinks of him as he was when he was twelve, when she nearly lost him. She can't seem to forget the image of it. "Just in case this isn't a one-off murder, you should… not. Uh, stay out this late, for, a little bit. Just to be safe."

Mabel blinks. Something inside her - the independent teenager corner of her brain, probably - bristles at the idea of being told what to do, especially by her own twin, who has a bad habit of giving advice he doesn't take himself. Maybe, at one time, she would've gotten pissed at him for it.

But Dipper's working his throat, and the muscles in his jaw are twitching, and she'd recognize those wide cow eyes anywhere, and his voice was quavering; he was scared. And it made sense, especially coming from Dipper, who had a habit of working himself into all sorts of tizzies over all sorts of things.

It also made sense coming from a teenager who'd lost his mom a week and a half ago and wasn't ready to lose anyone else.

So Mabel swallows her bristly pride, and remembers that the best way to deal with Dipper's anxiety is to indulge his idea of safety.

"Pfft," Mabel says. "I can fight off twenty pirates. I'm in a whole new league. You, Dippin' Dots, need to watch out. You can only fight of a half of a skeleton." She winks at him to finish the effect with a flourish. "But, if I have to, I'll abide by your curfew, bossy. As long as you do, too!"

It works; Dipper's shoulders slump like she'd untied a threaded knot between them. Mabel Pines is a confirmed Good Sister once more.

Dipper chuckles. "I can fight off a whole skeleton, thank you. Maybe even two skeletons. I totally have biceps."

Mabel forms her fingers into a pair of goggles and puts them over her eyes. "Puttin' on these skepticals, bro."

"Oh, you asshole," Dipper says, without any real feeling. "You want some hot chocolate?"

"It's only four in the morning," Mabel shrugs. "Why not?"

"It's always hot chocolate time," Dipper says, and he stands up, wincing.

"Oh, don't you dare think I didn't catch your pained facial expression," Mabel says, eyes narrowing. "What's up?"

She bets it's his knee. His left eyebrow only does that twitching thing when it's his knee.

"My knee," Dipper mumbles, blushing.

Bingo.

He really needs to stop getting embarrassed about that thing, Mabel thinks. Do I need to file this beneath Address Later or Screw It, It'll Get Better?

"Then I should make the hot chocolate," Mabel says, standing up. "Go lay down, I'll bring it to you."

"Absolutely not."

Mabel raises her fists, and rolls them like she's about to fight him, which she totally is. And she's going to win. "Fight me, loser. We never had that rematch, we can do it right here, right now."

Dipper puts up his fists in a similar position. "I'll kick your ass. I'll do it."

"I'm making the hot chocolate," Mabel insists, throwing a fake jab at his shoulder.

Dipper makes a good show of pretending that it actually hit him, a comically pained expression sliding over his features. "Screw you, I'm going to be a good brother and bring you the hot chocolate."

"But I'm going to bring it to you."

"But you've been out all night! You're freezing! As the official doctor, I'm prescribing you a blanket, bed, and your Big Hero 6 pajamas. Go, go," Dipper says, ushering her to the stairs.

"But," Mabel complains. "Walking up the stairs is going to be hell for you!"

"And I have to do it anyway, so I better be doing it for a good reason," Dipper says.

"Is sleep not a good enough reason?" she asks.

"Sleep is for the weak," he says, and limps into the kitchen. It's almost painful to watch - actually, scratch that, it is painful to watch. When it does bother him, it's practically the bane of his existence.

"Dipshit!" she calls.

"Thank you!" Dipper responds.

Mabel sighs. It's hard to take care of Dipper, because he forgets he needs caring for, too. The asshole.

Dipper leans out of the doorway. "Go upstairs!"

"Okay, okay! Bossypants!" she teases, and ascends the stairs. The warmth is slowly leaching back into her bones, but walking up the stairs still proves difficult, being as numb as she is.

A picture on the wall catches her attention - the silver frame is gleaming in the moonlight, and she automatically knows which picture it is.

It's the old family photo, the only one they took. They took it the Hanukkah before Gravity Falls happened.

She carefully unhooks the photo and holds it, reverently. Her fingers brush the cold glass.

Her mom looks a lot younger than the ghost of her does; there's less ancient knowledge behind her dark eyes, less lines around her eyes. Her dad looks less like he feels like he's dead inside, more like a Pines, broad shoulders bent straight and big green eyes wide like he just can't contain his excitement. They look good, happy, healthy. Her mom is the epitome of the Mariolos and her dad is the epitome of the Pineses, and it's perfect.

Dipper looks shyer, less confident. He's not leaning towards her like he does these days. Mabel sometimes forgets about how Gravity Falls simultaneously tore them apart and brought them closer together, how they were twins who couldn't really stand each other and then they were closer than close gets. He looks like he doesn't quite get what he's doing there, and he probably doesn't.

Mabel, herself, is grinning at the camera widely, sitting between her parents and pulling them closer together. She looks a lot less like the face Mabel sees in the mirror; younger, happier. Mabel wishes she could go back to then, to being young and carefree, no Gravity Falls and no ghosts haunting her bathroom.

No monsters creeping around the city. No Melanie Wrights with their lives ended abruptly. No Melanie Wrights she could have saved.

She's crying before she knows what to do with herself; it's some byproduct of stress and grief, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of the guilt she's feeling for keeping Dipper in the dark.

She stumbles into her room, blindly, depositing the picture between her bed and her wall and listening to it bump against the floor with a crack. She doesn't care if it's broken - the people in it are broken, anyway, so what's the point of pretending?

At some point, she ends up on her bed, not really thinking besides the constant stream of why going through her head.

She's dimly aware of being folded into a hug, being curled into someone else's warmth. She wishes - dear God, does she wish - that it was her mother. If she keeps her eyes shut for long enough, it'll be her mother when she opens them. In that moment, Mabel wishes she had the opportunity to deal with Bill Cipher just once, and she knows deep in her heart that she would trade anything to go back in time and stay there, forever. She would give anything. She wants the person hugging her now to be her mother, her father, Grunkle Stan, all the people she can't have.

But it's not, and it's never going to be, so her arms wrap around Dipper's waist and her hands grab fistfuls of the cotton at his shoulders and she cries her eyes out. They're loud, ugly sobs, and she's glad her father's car wasn't in the driveway when she got home because he would definitely not approve.

When she's cried her fill, her left cheek is burning. "Damn it, Dipshit, your stupid scruff hurts. Why do guys get hair on their faces when they go through puberty? It's dumb. It's so dumb. Your face is dumb, Dipper."

He does nothing more than chuckle against her shoulder. With her ear pressed against him, though, it sounds like a rumble, like those funky sounds elephants make.

"It really is," she insists. "The epitome of dumb."

"It's okay, Mabel," he mumbles, and he sounds so sincere that Mabel nearly starts sobbing all over again.

"It's not, it's not. It's really not. Why can't things go back to the way they were?" she whispers.

Dipper presses her closer to him, like he's trying to put her back together with the sheer force of his will. "I'm sorry," he says. "But they can't."

"Why not?" Mabel whines. She doesn't even feel bad for the snot she's getting on Dipper's shirt, in all honesty.

"'Cause... time's a single point. It's all about the moment we're in. The past doesn't exist in the past, it's brought to the present with us," Dipper says.

"...That was beautiful."

"I quoted it from an article about the science of time," Dipper replies.

"Oh my God, you nerd," Mabel chuckles. "That's so nerdy, I just. Oh my God."

Dipper laughs. "It's true! And you did say it was beautiful."

"It was! I should've known you didn't come up with it yourself."

"I worded it myself!"

"You didn't figure it out yourself!"

Dipper releases her - he hugs like a bear - and looks at her with watery eyes crinkled in a smile. "But! That doesn't count. Absolutely not. Nope, notta, not even a little bit."

"Yes, it does, it is a very valid point," Mabel says, poking his chest with a finger. "And you, mister, have the burden of proof. So do your proof-ing and prove it to me, nerd."

"But you were the one who had a problem with my - beautiful, by the way - speech, so you have to prove your point first," Dipper says.

"Oh, you dipshit," Mabel says. "Absolute dipshit."

Dipper sticks his tongue out at her, and then performs a complicated maneuver where he twists the top half of his body to reach behind him. (Mabel stifles a giggle. He looks like he's struggling.)

It takes him a minute, but Dipper resurfaces with a mug of - now lukewarm - hot chocolate.

Mabel blinks. "I thought you made you one, too?"

"Uh, I came out to check the scanner and heard you crying, so I finished your hot chocolate so I'd have something to cheer you up with," Dipper says.

Mabel grins at him. "Aw, and the Grinch's heart grew."

"Shut up!" he whines.

"We can share this one," she says, and offers Dipper the mug.

He shakes his head. "No, it's yours -"

"Just drink it," Mabel commands, and Dipper takes a sip from the, 'lol cats r cuter' mug.

They take turns sipping hot chocolate and talking about the dumbest, most banal things until they both fall asleep.

The thing about being tall, Mabel thinks, is that you can't cuddle with someone else who is also tall on a small bed without paying the price.

It's true. She's been subtly rubbing her neck through her first two blocks, and Dipper's been using the edge of his desk to massage a kink out of his forearm. It's the most interesting thing happening since MaKenna stole Mabel's paper and drew elephants on it, like she always did when she thought Mabel needed a pick-me-up.

Earlier, she'd caught sight of the bags beneath Mabel's eyes back in first block, reached into her bag, and pulled out two canisters of coffee; without comment, Mabel had passed the black coffee to Dipper - who blushed and started thanking MaKenna profusely - and then taken the French Vanilla one.

(Mabel's been best friends with MaKenna since the first day of high school, when Mabel had gushed about her elephant-print shirt and then they'd started gushing about animals. Having known Mabel that long, MaKenna had become well acquainted with Dipper, even though they weren't textbook-definition 'friends,' so she usually gave him a coffee fix, too.)

MaKenna's just finishing the curly swoop of the last elephant's tail when the announcement comes on; "As a lot of you have discovered, Miss Melanie Wright suffered a terrible fate last night."

Murmurs spread throughout the room. Mabel feels her blood turn to ice; she can't help but think about the look on her mother's face as she sat, dead silent, and listened to Melanie get ripped apart, without doing anything to stop it.

Mabel had screamed, cried, howled, but Marcella had never responded.

"A ceremony honoring her memory," the announcer continued, "Will be held in the auditorium at two thirty."

Mabel swallows, hard.

"May-bae?" MaKenna asks. "You cool?"

"I'm upset," she says.

"About Melanie?" MaKenna says. "Because there's nothing you could've done that could change things."

If only she knew.

"You're right," Mabel says. She understands that, yeah, sure, Mabel couldn't have stopped the thing that tore through Melanie. It's not Mabel's fault. But she still regrets not trying harder, because she's the only living person in the whole wide world who knew what was going to happen, even if her warning came seconds before the act itself.

Her eyes find Dipper's. His seat is directly across the room from hers, which has led to no less than eighty-three Facial Expression Brigades. Right now, he's giving her a thumbs up.

She winks back at him, and turns to the board just as the teacher speaks up.

"I have no clue why in the name of all that is good and holy that they would wait this long to make an announcement," Ms. Redd complains. "But all is well! In the email, it says I am to dismiss you from my class at regular time, and from there you will meander on to the auditorium. So, you're not missing any work today, suckers!"

The class groans, and the clock starts to tick down to the time of the assembly.

It doesn't take long enough for Mabel to get her bearings, and then the walk down doesn't take nearly long enough. By the time she sits down, firmly placed between Dipper and MaKenna - two vicious bulldogs in their own right - she's exhausted.

They're quiet until the assembly begins.

The principal wipes his eyes with a handkerchief before beginning. "Death, students, is a part of life. It happens to all of us - the worst of us, the best of us."

The mumbles and whispers at the corners of the hall are snuffed out.

"Last night, a terrible tragedy fell upon us; Melanie Wright, senior, was murdered."

The whispers come back with a vengeance.

"We have no idea who would have committed such an atrocity. If any of you - anyone at all - has any idea as to who would do such a thing, then, by all means, speak up. Tell me, an administrator, a teacher, call the police yourself if you must. But, do not stay silent. We want justice for Melanie's death, and we will have justice, but we need the help of all of you.

"A few individuals have asked to speak," the principal continued. "Please, give them your utmost respect."

Mabel folds her hands in her lap, respectfully taking in each word they say. Marco speaks, and so does Giani, and then two other people Mabel doesn't recognize before Silas Nier steps up to the podium.

She'd know those highlighter-yellow Lebrons anywhere. He's even wearing the same gross, stained gray hoodie he wore all through freshman year.

She only knows him because he used to pester Dipper for her number, and when Dipper proved to be a dead end, she started pestering everyone else Mabel knew before coming to her and outright asking if she wanted to have sex with him. (Dipper would've probably punched his lights out, but he wasn't tall and intimidating in freshman year - in fact, in freshman year, they were both incredibly tiny. So, Dipper resolved to make the guy's life a living hell until he quit. Mabel never asked what he did to make Silas go away, but it was extremely effective.)

She knows, for a fact, that Melanie Wright would never come within ten feet of Silas Nier. She used to chase Silas away from Mabel's heels all the time, in fact. So why was he speaking at a ceremony about her death?

"Hey," Silas says. "I didn't know Melanie very well, but I do know that she was a beautiful person, with a beautiful soul. She had an effect, y'know, on people. She gave me courage, just by being who she was. And this? This, this is courage. You need the help of the people to find the killer, and I found the killer: Mabel Pines."

 **A/N: Please roast Silas.**


End file.
